The Trump Administration has aggressively rolled back prior administrations’ environmental regulations and natural resource policies, and critics of this agenda have turned to the judiciary. A remarkable string of federal court decisions has faulted the Administration for failing to follow the standard for agency policy change articulated in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc.
A district court held invalid an amendment to the city of Toledo's charter that gave legal rights to Lake Erie. A local family farm argued the amendment was unconstitutionally vague and thus that it should be invalidated. The court found that the environmental rights of the lake and its watershed to...
The Fourth Circuit upheld a district court order that remanded to state court the city of Baltimore's climate change case against oil companies. The city alleged it sustained climate change-related injuries, including an increase in sea levels, storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and extreme precip...
The D.C. Circuit dismissed as untimely Maryland's petition to review the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) approval of new flight paths to Washington National Airport. The state argued the new flight paths, which concentrated aircraft noise over its public lands, should be vacated because th...
The Washington Supreme Court invalidated a rule promulgated by the state's Department of Ecology authorizing regulation via emission standards of businesses that do not directly emit greenhouse gases (GHGs), but whose products do. Industry groups and utility companies argued the Department lacked au...
The Fifth Circuit held that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not waived its sovereign immunity from Louisiana's lawsuit alleging that the Corps failed to maintain the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway within authorized parameters under the River and Harbor Improvements Act (RHIA). Louisiana argued that...
A district court denied public interest groups' motion for partial summary judgment in challenging an executive order that requires federal agencies to repeal two existing rules for each new rule promulgated. The groups argued they had associational standing based on injuries that two of their membe...