A district court set aside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS') decision not to designate critical habitat or to prepare a recovery plan for the jaguar. The FWS' critical habitat designation determination was not based on the best scientific evidence available and was inconsistent with the st...

The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision denying the trucking industry's motion to preliminarily enjoin two California ports from implementing "concession agreements" designed, among other things, to reduce diesel emissions from trucks servicing container facilities at the port...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a Native American tribe is not entitled to damages under the Indian Tucker Act (ITA) for an asserted breach of fiduciary duty by the Secretary of the Interior in connection with his failure promptly to approve a royalty rate increase under a coal lease the tribe exec...

The Fourth Circuit reversed a lower court order vacating certain base flood elevation determinations adopted by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for Richland County, South Carolina. The lower court vacated the determinations because FEMA failed to timely publish notice of the determination...

The D.C. Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing dairy farmers' action challenging the constitutionality of two amendments to the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act. The dairy farmers alleged that the amendments, which subjected certain large producer-handlers of milk to contribution re...

A district court upheld the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM's) decision to grant oil and gas drilling permits in south-central Wyoming. BLM's decisions were not arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise unlawful under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). BLM took the requisite hard look at envir...

A district court preliminarily enjoined the construction of a $113 million computer center in Berkeley, California. A citizens group raised serious questions going to the merits of its claim that the project is a "major federal action" under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Moreover, ir...

A district court held that environmental groups' citizen suit against the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for violating the Clean Air Act, the Tennessee state implementation plan, and related regulations in conjunction with its operation of coal-fired power plant in Bull Run, Tennessee, must procee...

A district court presiding over a group of residents' class action lawsuit against a manufacturer for allegedly contaminating water supplies dismissed an individual's New Jersey Environmental Rights Act (ERA) claim against the company for failure to provide notice. A plaintiff seeking to bring a cla...

The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Virginia Code §56-585.1(A)(6), a provision of the state's utility law that requires coal-fired power plants to use Virginia coal. Environmental groups, challenging the state's approval of the construction of a coal-fired power plant, ar...