The Flight of the Bumblebee
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 the survival of three endangered species but requiring the project to avoid disturbing portions of the land. About six months later, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the FWS had failed to explain why they couldn't place numerical limits on the number of animals killed, which is the preferred approach. The FWS then went …
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