A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw |
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REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration |
- This term, the court continued its years-long trend of narrowing federal protections for the environment in several rulings that could be a boon for businesses.
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Perhaps the biggest environmental decision this term involved a proposed Utah railway intended to transport crude oil. The 8-0 ruling narrowed the scope of environmental obligations for federal agencies under the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act. Read the opinion.
- "Depending on how lower courts interpret it, the NEPA case may pose the greatest threat of a major change in the law," University of California, Berkeley, law professor Daniel Farber said. Read more about that here.
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The court also dealt a blow to the EPA, ruling 5-4 that the agency exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act of 1972 by including vague restrictions in a permit issued for a wastewater treatment facility that empties into the Pacific Ocean. Read the opinion.
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Howard University School of Law professor Carlton Waterhouse, who was an EPA official during the Biden administration, said some parts of the U.S. could experience diminished water quality while a workaround is devised "to protect state water quality standards without a major tool they have used for decades." Read more here.
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In a third environmental ruling, the justices sided with fuel producers that had opposed California's standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law, agreeing that their legal challenge to the mandates should not have been dismissed. Read the opinion.
- John Kruzel has more about the rulings here.
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The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on final passage of President Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill today. Yesterday, the bill passed the U.S. Senate on a vote of 51-50 after Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Read more about what’s in the bill here.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to rule on the state’s abortion ban today. The lawsuit argued that an 1849 law prohibiting the killing of a fetus except to save the mother's life, which Republican prosecutors in the state have interpreted as a near-total abortion ban, violates the fundamental rights to life, liberty and equal protection under the law guaranteed by the constitution.
- U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston will consider whether to continue to block the Trump administration from carrying out steep cuts to federal research funding provided to universities by the U.S. Department of Defense.
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U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in D.C. will hold a motion hearing in the National Association of the Deaf’s lawsuit seeking to compel the White House to resume providing ASL interpreters during broadcasts of press briefings. Read the complaint.
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The American Association of Physicians for Human Rights will ask U.S. District Judge Lydia Griggsby in Greenbelt, Maryland, to issue a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health challenging the termination of federal grants for LGBTQ+ research. Read the complaint.
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U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, will hold a telephone conference in a lawsuit by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility seeking to block President Trump’s effort to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers and make it easier to fire them. Read the complaint.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes. |
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