What's Wrong with Juliana (and What's Right?)
Originally published on Legal Planet.
Juliana v. United States, often called the "children's case," is an imaginative effort to make the federal government responsible for its role in promoting the production and use of fossil fuels and its failure to control carbon emissions. The plaintiffs ask the court to "declare that the United States' current environmental policy infringes their fundamental rights, direct the agencies to conduct a consumption-based inventory of United States CO2 emissions," and use that inventory to "prepare and implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO2 so as to stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend."
More specifically, they ask the court to "order Defendants to cease their permitting, authorizing, and subsidizing of fossil fuels and, instead, move to swiftly phase out CO2 emissions, as well as take such other action necessary to ensure that atmospheric CO2 is no more concentrated than 350 ppm by 2100, including to develop a national plan to restore Earth's energy balance, and implement that national plan so as to stabilize the climate system."
Although the …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US).
In a mixed-bag ruling, a unanimous Supreme Court returned Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to decide several questions not answered on the first go-round. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for the court appears calculated to decide just enough to justify shipping the case back to the lower court.
The case involves the Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation, under the Endangered Species Act, of property in Louisiana as "critical habitat" for the dusky gopher frog. The frog has not lived on this property for many years, but the service concluded that the property was essential to the conservation of the frog – and thus appropriately deemed critical habitat – because it contains high-quality …
The meeting logs for the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) – the small but powerful bureau that oversees federal rulemaking efforts on behalf of the president – have looked a little different in recent weeks. As usual, they are graced by high-priced corporate lobbyists and attorneys from white-shoe law firms, along with a smattering of activists from public interest organizations. But also signing in have been nearly a dozen ordinary Americans, representing only themselves, and they've been there to express their views on one rule: the Department of Education's proposal to weaken existing federal measures aimed at addressing sexual assaults on college campuses.
The draft proposal, which has been a top of priority of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos the last few months, is attracting considerable controversy. It overturns several decades' worth of federal policy on the issue of sexual misconduct at federally funded educational institutions …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US).
The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday morning in Virginia Uranium Inc. v. Warren, which concerns the largest uranium deposit in the United States, located in south-central Virginia. The petitioners are owners of the deposit who wish to mine uranium, and they are challenging a 1983 statute by which the Virginia General Assembly imposed a moratorium on uranium mining. Although all parties agree that uranium mining is a matter for state regulation, the owners contend that the moratorium was impermissibly intended to regulate radiation safety associated with uranium milling and tailings management — a field pre-empted by the Atomic Energy Act. The case therefore raises questions about the extent to which a state legislature's motives are relevant to deciding whether the state statute is pre-empted.
Arguing for …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US). Click here to read Professor Zellmer's follow-up analysis of the oral arguments in this case and here to read her analysis of the opinion.
“Alaska is different.” So said Chief Justice John Roberts when the U.S. Supreme Court last took up this case two years ago in Sturgeon v. Frost (Sturgeon I). When the court hears a second oral argument in Sturgeon v. Frost (Sturgeon II) next Monday, it will once again consider whether a form of transportation unknown to most people outside of Alaska – a hovercraft (an amphibious vehicle that glides over land and water) – can be used in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve conservation system unit (CSU). Why, you may ask, would the court bother (twice) with such an arcane and …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US). Click here to read Professor Hammond's follow-up analysis of the oral arguments in this case.
On November 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, which could test the extent to which a court will explore a state legislature’s motives when evaluating whether a state statute is pre-empted by federal law. The facts concern the largest uranium deposit in the United States, located in south-central Virginia. The petitioners are owners of the deposit who wish to mine uranium, and they are challenging a 1983 statute by which the Virginia General Assembly passed a moratorium on uranium mining:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, permit applications for uranium mining shall not be accepted by any agency of the Commonwealth prior to …
This post was originally published as part of a symposium on ACSblog, the blog of the American Constitution Society. Reprinted with permission.
Now that they have a fifth vote, conservative justices will march to the front lines in the intensifying war on regulation. What will their strategy be? Two tactics are likely, one long-standing and one relatively new. Both have the advantage of avoiding the outright repudiation of Chevron v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837 (1984), although, as a practical matter, the outcome will be the same.
The first is to pull most cases into Step One of Chevron, granting unto judges the exclusive authority to say what regulatory statutes mean when they use faux plain meaning words like (in)appropriate, (un)acceptable, and (in or un)feasible. As construed in multiple lower course opinions applying Chevron, such terms signify congressional intent that agencies gap-fill, making science-based …
On Wednesday, October 3, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Knick v. Township of Scott. The case poses the question of whether property owners suing state or local governments under the Takings Clause are required to pursue their claims in state court (or through other state compensation procedures) rather than in federal court, at least if the state has established a fair and adequate procedure for awarding compensation if a taking has in fact occurred.
The Knick case presents the opportunity for the Court to decide whether or not to embrace a longstanding goal of property advocates: to overturn the 1985 precedent of Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, which channels most takings lawsuits arising from local zoning and other similar land use disputes into state court. In my view, Williamson County was correctly decided, its essential premises have been repeatedly …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US).
Editor's note: You can read Professor Heinzerling's follow-up post, which analyzes the oral arguments in this case, on SCOTUSblog.
A tiny amphibian takes center stage in the first case of October 2018 term. The dusky gopher frog is native to the forested wetlands of the southern coastal United States, with a historical range from the Mississippi River in Louisiana to the Mobile River delta in Alabama. The frog breeds in ephemeral ponds – ponds that are wet for brief periods and then dry out completely – and spends the rest of its life in upland, open-canopy forests, living in burrows created by other animals. Today, the only known remaining population of the dusky gopher frog lives on a single pond in Mississippi.
In 2001, the U.S. Fish …
Cross-posted from LegalPlanet.
In June, the Supreme Court decided two cases that could have significant implications for environmental law. The two cases may shed some light on the Court's current thinking about the Chevron doctrine. The opinions suggest that the Court may be heading in the direction of more rigorous review of interpretations of statutes by agencies like EPA and the SEC. That could be important as Trump's deregulatory actions start hitting the judicial docket. Thus, in the short-run, limiting Chevron could help check an out-of-control presidency. In the long run, however, it could also hinder progressive regulatory efforts.
As my wife reminds me from time to time, not everyone in the world spends their time on administrative law. So, before I get to that, I'll start with a quick review of the Chevron doctrine, partly drawn from earlier posts. If you don't need that, just skip …
