Originally published on Legal Planet.

Last Friday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals halted efforts to build a natural gas pipeline because the Trump administration had done such a lousy job of showing its compliance with the Endangered Species Act. This was one of the administration's many losses in court. The case involved a perfect example of "arbitrary and capricious" decision making, to use the legal terminology. In simpler terms, the government's explanation for its decision was as full of holes as a sieve. This was such a textbook case, I'll be surprised if the court's opinion doesn't make it into one of the environmental law casebooks.

The case, Defenders of Wildlife v. Dept. of Interior, was actually back before the Fourth Circuit for the second time. In 2017, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) issued a Biological Opinion saying that the project wouldn't jeopardize …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

To hear President Trump talk, the point of deregulation is to reduce the burden of regulation on industry. But weirdly enough, that doesn't turn out to be true of Trump's effort to repeal Obama's Clean Power Plan (CPP) and replace it with his own Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. Both rules regulate carbon emissions from power plants (though Trump's rule covers only coal plants). According to his own EPA, however, the Trump administration's approach will actually increase costs to industry.

It's actually a kind of perfect storm. First, the rule eliminates a trivial amount of carbon and handicaps any future climate efforts. Second, it imposes significant economic costs (many of them avoidable). Third, it reduces state governments to the role of unpaid engineering consultants. And – to mix metaphors – the cherry on top is that the ACE rule is actually likely to be …

Originally published on Legal Planet

There's already been a lot written in the aftermath of Justice Stevens's death, including Ann Carlson's excellent Legal Planet post earlier this week. I'd like to add something about an aspect of his jurisprudence that had great relevance to environmental law: his belief in the rule of law, and specifically, in the duty of both the judiciary and the executive branch to respect and implement congressional mandates.

This stance was evident in Justice Stevens's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, probably the most important environmental case that Supreme Court has ever decided. The Bush administration refused to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. But the statute was very clear. It defined air pollutants as any substance emitted into the air, and it required regulation of such pollutants whenever they endanger human health or welfare. The Bush administration also argued that international …

Originally published on Legal Planet

Mississippi recently passed a law that has the effect of banning terms like "veggie burger." It's easy to imagine other states passing similar laws. From an environmental view, that's problematic, because beef in particular is connected with much higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant products. It's not just the methane from cow-burps, it's also all the carbon emissions connected with growing corn to feed the cattle. But in addition to its environmental drawbacks, the Mississippi law is subject to severe constitutional problems.

I had to do a little digging to find the law itself. It's an amendment to a law requiring truthful labeling of meat products. It reads as follows: "A food product that contains cultured animal tissue produced from animal cell cultures outside of the organism from which it is derived shall not be labeled as meat or a meat …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

The Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Kisor v. Wilkie was eagerly awaited by administrative law experts. It is one skirmish in the ongoing war over deference to agencies. In this case, the issue was whether to overrule the Auer doctrine, which requires courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own regulations. This doctrine, like its big brother, the Chevron doctrine, has become a target for conservative scholars and judges. The Auer doctrine has obvious relevance to environmental law, where agencies like EPA frequently have to interpret their own regulations in making decisions about permits or enforcement.

Kisor v. Wilkie seems like an unpromising vehicle for a major Supreme Court opinion. The case involves a mundane dispute over the start date for a combat veteran’s claim for compensation for his PTSD. The facts are explained in detail …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

In a recent decision, four of the conservative Supreme Court Justices indicated a desire to limit the amount of discretion that Congress can give administrative agencies. If taken literally, some of the language they used would hobble the government by restricting agencies like EPA to "filling in the details" or making purely factual determinations. Some observers have feared that the conservatives were on the verge of dismantling modern administrative law. As I indicated in a blog post on Thursday, I think this is something of an overreaction.

As it happens, later that same day, the Supreme Court gave another signal that it is happy to allow a great deal of administrative discretion. The issue in the census case (Dept. of Commerce v. New York) was whether it was legal for the Commerce Secretary to add a question about citizenship to the census …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

Gundy v. United States was a case involving a fairly obscure statute regulating sex offenders, but some have seen it as a harbinger of the destruction of the modern administrative state. In a 4-1-3 split, the Court turned away a constitutional challenge based on a claim that Congress had delegated too much authority to the executive branch. But there were ominous signs that at least four Justices are willing to change the ground rules in order to slash the authority of administrative agencies. What we don't know yet is whether they can get a fifth vote, and how far they are willing to go.

The issue before the Court was whether the statute was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the Attorney General. For almost 90 years, the test has been whether a statute contains an "intelligible principle" limiting executive discretion …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

When a facility installs and operates the required pollution control equipment, we normally think of the pollution problem as solved. But there still may be bursts of pollution associated with start-up, shut-down, accidents, or external events. A recent study of pollution in Texas shows that these events have substantial health impacts, involving significant deaths and overall costs of about a quarter billion dollars a year in that state. Ironically, the study comes out at the same time as Trump's EPA has proposed to approve Texas's lax treatment of these "exceptional events." Texas purports to bar federal courts from even considering civil penalties for permit violations due to those events.

These events may be exceptional, but that does not make them harmless. The study by researchers at the University of Indiana proved that excess emissions from exceptional events impact public health. According …

Originally published on Legal Planet.

The Trump administration's hostile attitude toward science has continued unabated. The administration has used a triad of strategies: efforts to defund research, suppression of scientific findings, and embrace of fringe science.

1. Budget. The administration continues to favor deep cuts in research support. Its initial 2020 budget proposal calls for a 13 percent cut to the National Science Foundation, a 12 percent cut at the National Institutes of Health, and elimination of the Energy Department's research support for advanced energy technologies (ARPA-E) and EPA's climate change research office. The proposal would also eliminate funding for the Sea Grant program, which funds environmental research on the coasts. The budget proposal is unlikely to become law, given that similar proposals were rejected even when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. But they are indicative of the administration's values.  
2. Toxic chemical risks. A report by …