On August 28, 2024, Cape Fear River Watch, along with other non-profit public interest organizations, submitted a petition to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) under 40 C.F.R. § 123.64(b) (2024).
In a decisive ruling, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled 4-1 to allow commercial aquarium fish collection to resume along the West Hawaii shoreline. This area, known as the West Hawaii Regional Fishery Management Area, had been at the center of a legal battle over the environmental effects of the aquarium fish trade.
On June 20, 2024, youth plaintiffs and the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation (HDOT) reached a historic settlement agreement in Navahine F. v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation that requires HDOT to enact various initiatives to significantly decarbonize the transportation sector.
The National Sea Grant Law Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law is seeking applications for its Ocean and Coastal Law Fellowship Program. The objective of the fellowship is to further the Fellow’s education and career development in ocean and coastal law through participation in the Law Center’s programs and activities.
For more than a century the Rio Grande—a river which snakes through Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, before continuing south into Mexico—has been the focus of a number of important negotiations. Arguably the most important of these agreements has been the Rio Grande Compact, signed in 1938 by all the states who touch the river.
At the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a case that had been a titan of administrative law for four decades. In 1984, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council established a two-step test for ruling on the legality of government agencies’ interpretations of vague statutory language.
On May 6, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published a request for public comments on its draft Environmental Justice Strategic Plan (Plan). As required by Executive Order 14096, the DOJ’s Plan will specify the DOJ’s goals, metrics, and priority actions that it will undertake to address environmental justice (EJ). The DOJ must publicly release the finalized Plan by October 2024. To meet the objectives of Executive Order 14096, the DOJ has outlined four goals and currently requests public feedback.