• Energy

Trump and Big Oil Have Some Bad Days In Court

• California
• Clean Air Act
• climate change
• conservation
• endangered species
• Endangered Species Act
• environment
• federal pre-emption
• sage grouse

A federal appeals court in California ruled that lawsuits against the major oil companies by San Mateo County and the city of Oakland for compensation for climate change impacts such as sea-level rise are not blocked by federal law from going forward in state court.  And a judge in Montana invalidated 440 oil and gas leases on federal land because the Interior Department did not adhere to an agreement between the agency and farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and energy groups to protect habitat for the sage grouse, which allowed the bird to remain off the endangered species list.

Why This Matters:  Oil and gas companies have suffered several high profile unfavorable rulings in recent days.

• Land

Supreme Court Upholds Virginia’s Uranium Mining Ban

• Atomic Enegy Act
• ban
• federal pre-emption
• mining
• nuclear power
• Supreme Court
• uranium

In an unanticipated plot twist, the Supreme Court’s most liberal and conservative Justices joined together and upheld a decades-old Virginia law banning uranium mining, and did so over the objection of the Trump Justice Department and three other Justices who now occupy the ideological center of the Court.