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June 20, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled June 20 that a group of liquid fuel sellers and producers established standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution to challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to waive new Clean Air Act (CAA) standards for automobile emissions as they apply to California and remanded the case for a decision on the merits.
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June 20, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A group of environmental nonprofit organizations sued President Donald Trump and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a District of Columbia federal court alleging violation of an untapped provision within the Clean Air Act (CAA) through a new proclamation that exempts nearly one-third of the country’s coal-fired power plants from modernized pollution standards that target “highly toxic substances.”
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June 19, 2025
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued a notice of intent to sue to xAI CEO Elon Musk and other corporate officials alleging that the construction and operation of xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis, Tenn., violates the Clean Air Act (CAA) and other hazardous air pollutant requirements.
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June 18, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A split U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 18 that Texas and the owner of hundreds of acres of land near the proposed site of a planned interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in west Texas are not “parties aggrieved” under the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and elements of the Hobbs Act in determining that they were not eligible to obtain judicial review in the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals of a license issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for construction of the facility.
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June 18, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on June 18 vacated a ruling by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals declining to transfer to the District of Columbia Circuit a case involving oil refineries’ challenges to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s denial of requests for exemption from the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) Renewable Fuels Standards (RFS) program, finding that the CAA’s ‘“nationwide scope or effect’ exception applies, and the case belongs in the D.C. Circuit.”
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June 18, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on June 18 reversed and remanded a case over the proper venue to hear challenges to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s disapproval of state implementation plans (SIPs) for new air quality standards under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The court held that the SIPs filed by the states of Oklahoma and Utah are locally or regionally applicable actions reviewable in a regional circuit court.
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June 18, 2025
OAKLAND, Calif. — A group of states that follow California’s regulations for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles are suing the federal government over a series of recently adopted resolutions that eliminated the Clean Air Act (CAA) preemption waivers, arguing that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was unlawfully used to streamline the approval process.
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June 16, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on June 16 agreed to decide the scope of the federal officer removal statute after granting oil companies’ petition contending that their drilling and related operations during World War II were sufficiently “related to” government contracts for federal jurisdiction over claims that their actions deviated from prudent industry practices.
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June 13, 2025
WHEELING, W.Va. — A city and its water authority have sued multiple companies in West Virginia federal court under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) seeking to recover the costs associated with removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that have tainted the local sources of drinking water.
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June 12, 2025
ROME, Ga. — A large textile mill operator, the town where it operates and one of its product manufacturers will pay more than $1.25 million to a group of water subscribers and ratepayers for their admitted involvement in contaminating groundwater in a northwest region of Georgia with toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) through partial class action settlements granted final approval on June 11 by a federal judge.
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June 11, 2025
SEATTLE — An environmental nonprofit on June 10 filed suit in a federal court in Washington against a Seattle-based gypsum manufacturing facility for alleged violations of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit and the Clean Water Act (CWA) through discharges of stormwater and industrial waste into the nearby waters of Puget Sound.
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June 11, 2025
PADUCAH, Ky. — A ferrosilicon producer seeks reconsideration of a Kentucky federal magistrate judge’s ruling limiting the scope of the producer’s issued deposition topics, claiming that the court erred in failing to acknowledge a reinsurer as a proper party in the litigation and misinterpreted its role in a reinsurance contract in a dispute over pollution-related cleanup costs.
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June 10, 2025
CINCINNATI — Several fraud claims made by owners of diesel Chevrolet vehicles who said that they were misled by the manufacturer through the installation of devices designed to defeat U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emissions testing may not have been preempted by the Clean Air Act (CAA), a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled in partially vacating and remanding a Michigan federal court’s dismissal ruling.
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June 06, 2025
ASHEBORO, N.C. — Environmental groups have sued a city and two businesses in North Carolina federal court contending that they are liable for contaminating groundwater with the cancer-causing chemical 1,4-dioxane by allowing untreated wastewater to make its way downstream into the drinking water supplies for other municipalities.
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June 05, 2025
DENVER — A federal judge in Colorado determined that a stay enjoining construction of a massive Boulder County water expansion project pending an appeal by the city and county of Denver to an order that remanded permits for the project to the federal agencies that issued them “is not merited due to safety concerns,” denying a motion for permanent injunction filed by a group of environmental nonprofits.
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June 04, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — ExxonMobil on June 4 waived a 14-day waiting period for distribution and wants the U.S. Supreme Court to consider by the end of the month a petition for a writ of certiorari asking for review of an order issued by a “fractured” en banc Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that requires the company to pay a $14.25 million penalty for air pollution incidents at a Texas facility.
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June 04, 2025
NEW YORK — A Connecticut landowner found to be liable for the remediation of his property after he violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) by filling in protected wetlands without a permit and failed to adhere to warnings and notices from various federal agencies filed a motion for a petition for rehearing as a matter of law asking the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to dismiss the case and issue an injunction preventing federal agencies from enforcing the CWA on private property.
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June 04, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States says the U.S. Supreme Court should grant a petition for writ of certiorari filed by the operators of a Tacoma, Wash., marine cargo terminal asking whether the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals was correct in ruling that two state-issued National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits applied to the entirety of the terminal where stormwater discharges entered into Puget Sound on the grounds that private citizens cannot bring actions in federal court to enforce certain state permit conditions under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
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June 02, 2025
SEATTLE — The daughter of a Washington woman who died from extreme heat that was allegedly “directly linked to fossil fuel-driven alteration of the climate” is suing manufacturers, distributors and sellers of fossil fuels in a Washington court for wrongful death, public nuisance and failure to warn for their alleged roles in effecting the reportedly fatal climate change circumstances.
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May 28, 2025
By Mark A. Behrens and Joseph T. Zaleski
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May 30, 2025
BUTTE, Mont. — A group of 22 minors and young adults in a May 29 complaint asks a federal judge in Montana to rescind and declare unconstitutional a series of executive orders issued by President Donald J. Trump and his administration that include directives to increase fossil fuel production, alleging fossil fuel greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is “destroying the foundation of” their lives and infringing on their constitutional rights.
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May 29, 2025
BATON ROUGE, La. — Several environmental nonprofit organizations allege in a complaint in a Louisiana federal court that a state law aimed at providing public access to air quality monitoring results violates the First and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution by targeting their grassroots missions to monitor air quality in local communities, thus tying their hands and making them susceptible to “crippling civil penalties.”
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May 28, 2025
MISSOULA, Mont.— Without “any material change in circumstances” detected since an earlier denial, a Montana federal judge once again decided not to grant a motion for permanent injunction filed by an environmental group that would have regulated the U.S. Forest Service’s aerial deployment of fire retardant to fight wildfires after the service violated the Clean Water Act (CWA) by performing the action without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.
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May 23, 2025
CHICAGO — Following an order granting a motion by Chicago to remand to state court a suit against several large oil companies alleging they deceived the public about the harmful effects fossil fuel products have on climate change, an Illinois federal judge granted the companies’ emergency motion for a temporary stay of execution of the order pending a ruling in the federal court on a forthcoming motion to stay pending appeal but denied staying the order until the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rules on a motion to stay that would be filed in that court if the motion is denied, calling the latter request “premature.”
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May 23, 2025
NEW ORLEANS — Much like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its attainment designations of two Texas counties for the 2010 national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for sulfur dioxide over the last decade, a Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has changed course and granted petitions for review and rehearing filed by the state and several power companies on the agency’s latest nonattainment decision.