A district court enjoined the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from leasing approximately 1.7 million acres within the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska for oil exploration. The lease concerns vast areas of sensitive wetlands surrounding Lake Teshekpuk that are protected under the National Petrole...

The court held that the U.S. Army violated the National Environmental Policy Act in connection with its proposal to transform the 2nd Brigade into a quick-response unit in Hawaii. The local groups challenging the proposal did not waive their right to challenge the sufficiency of the Army's considera...

A district court held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to take a "hard look" at the environmental impacts and consequences of dredging and disposing of contaminated sediment from the Industrial Canal, a five-mile link just east of New Orleans in the navigational system that connects the ...

A district court granted in part and denied in part cross-motions for summary judgment in a case challenging the National Park Service's (NPS') decision to exempt from agency oversight directional drilling activities in and around Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas. Directional drilling refers t...

The court upheld the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's dismissal of environmental groups' intervention in early site permit proceedings for new nuclear power facilities in Clinton, Illinois. The groups contended, among other things, that the applicant failed to adequately consider energy efficiency or...

The court held that the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) environmental assessment (EA) for a logging project in Oregon violated the National Environmental Policy Act and that the lower court erred in dismissing the case as moot. Although the harvested trees cannot be restored, harm to old gro...

The court held that it lacked appellate jurisdiction over a lower court's partial grant of summary judgment in favor of the parent company of a chemical plant in Bhopal, India, that allegedly caused soil and groundwater contamination. Property owners and residents near the plant sought monetary and ...

The court dismissed environmental organizations' claims that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) failed to conduct the environmental and historical assessments required by the National Environmental Polic...

A district court held that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) arbitrarily and capriciously denied petitions to list certain genetically engineered varieties of grasses as noxious weeds under the Plant Protection Act. APHIS' insistence that international obligations require that p...

The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of landowners' takings claim against a city for allowing their land to become flooded due to city-owned stormwater detention ponds and a wastewater treatment facility. The flooding transformed their land from farmland to wetlands. The landowners filed an inve...