On February 28, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), “in consultation with the Federal Railroad Administration and pursuant to the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) of 2015, issued a Final Rule “to revise and clarify requirements for comprehensive oil spill response plans (COSRPs)”…
On February 26, 2019, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a joint memorandum (Memo) clarifying how state transportation departments that have been delegated responsibility under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) should implement federal directives to streamline the environmental review and approvals of…
The U.S. has experienced a large number of natural disasters requiring the immediate assistance that only the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can provide. In Barbosa, et al., v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, decided March 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit provided a very…
Today, Pillsbury attorneys Glenn Sweatt and Julia Judish published their Client Alert titled OFCCP Conducts Town Hall Meetings for Tech Industry Contractors and Implements Program Changes. Takeaways from the Alert include: The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has made several high-profile pro-contractor changes in the…
On February 27, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and held that international organizations, such as the World Bank, while being protected by the International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945 (IOIA), are not absolutely immune from lawsuits filed in federal…
On March 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided National Parks Conservation Assoc. v. Todd T. Simonite, Lieutenant General, et al. The case involves an application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) for a construction permit to build electric power lines over the “historic…
On February 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decided Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. City of Roanoke, et al.; the Chesapeake Bay Foundation was an Intervenor-Defendant. The Fourth Circuit held that a large stormwater management fee (stated to be $417,000.00 for the year 2017) levied by the City…
Prior to deciding whether to review an important February 1, 2018, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision involving the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act (CWA), Hawai’i Wildlife Fund, et al., v. County of Maui, the Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General for the views of the…
On February 14, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the complaint of the National American Butterfly Association (NABA) alleging that the U.S. Government’s border wall preparation and law enforcement activities at NABA’s National Butterfly Center, located in South Texas along the Rio Grande River, violated federal environmental laws…
Most companies have been involved in a situation where they want to end their relationship with another company, or with an employee, and to permanently terminate their mutual obligations (e.g., a settlement agreement resolving end-of-project litigation). In 1992, a California Court of Appeals, in Winet v. Price, confirmed that upholding…