environmental-law

June 27, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, on the one-year anniversary of Justice Anthony Kennedy announcing his retirement, the Supreme Court ruled on cases involving the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census and partisan gerrymandering. The Court struck down the citizenship question, reasoning that the Trump Administration did not give adequate explanation for adding the question, but also ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of the federal courts.

June 26, 2019

Top Trump Air Pollution official Bill Wehrum's resignation comes in no small part due to the scrutiny his corruption and extremism received due to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

June 25, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new proposed EPA FOIA rule, first reported in The Hill, will give untrained political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to make decisions about public information requests.

June 20, 2019

San Francisco, CA-- Today in federal court, ACLU attorney Dror Ladin will represent the Sierra Club, ACLU and SBCC in arguments against the Trump Administration’s appeal of a preliminary injunction granted in a lawsuit against the president’s national emergency declaration. The plaintiff groups won a preliminary injunction to block the Trump administration from using military funds to build 50-55 miles of new border wall in Arizona and New Mexico.

June 11, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Ten environmental groups sued the Trump administration today to challenge rollbacks of the 2016 Well Control and Blowout Preventer Rule, a safety regulation meant to prevent another blowout like what happened during the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

June 10, 2019

Montgomery County, MD -- Two weeks after a Maryland Circuit Court ruled against a coal company’s efforts to block clean water safeguards at its Chalk Point power plant in Prince George’s County, another Circuit Court judge rejected the same company’s attempt to challenge a Clean Water Act permit for its Dickerson plant in Montgomery County.

June 6, 2019

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a legal challenge to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, ruling the case was no longer active due to President Trump’s revocation of the permit at the center of the case. In March, Trump issued a new “presidential” permit for Keystone XL, in an effort to spur construction of the pipeline.

May 31, 2019

An administrative law judge is allowing Tampa Electric Company (TECO) to move forward with plans to burn fracked gas and more coal at their Tampa-area Big Bend plant.

May 24, 2019

OAKLAND, Calif. — A federal court today issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from constructing the president’s border wall using funds illegally transferred from military accounts, including pension and pay funds, under counterdrug authorities. Construction using the illicit funds was scheduled to begin as early as tomorrow, May 25th.
 

May 17, 2019

Oakland, CA-- Today, after hearing arguments from declarentes from the Sierra Club, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC)’s over their preliminary injunction motion on their challenge of Trump’s emergency declaration lawsuit, a federal judge declined to make a decision on the injunction. The preliminary injunction is a part of the group’s challenge of the president’s national emergency and blocks the administration’s initial transfer of over a billion dollars from the Pentagon for border wall construction.

May 10, 2019

Washington, DC--  Today, the Trump administration announced they will steal $1.5 billion in Pentagon funds to construct 80 more miles of wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. The move brings the total transferred out of the Pentagon budget for border walls to $2.5 billion.

May 7, 2019

TEXAS - Today, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Earthjustice, filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the agency’s failure to increase protections in numerous communities that have dangerous levels of ozone smog. The communities at issue include the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas; San Diego, Nevada, and Imperial counties, CA; the greater Chicago area; Phoenix, AZ; Baltimore, MD; Sheboygan, WI; the entire state of Connecticut; and the New York City area.