California v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

In a separate development related to the Waste Prevention Rule, BLM and other federal defendants-appellants moved to voluntarily dismiss their appeal of the October 2017 decision of the federal district court for the Northern District of California vacating BLM’s initial rule postponing certain compliance dates. The district court held that BLM had acted outside its authority to postpone the effective date of a rule and that BLM should have complied with the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements.

The conservation and tribal groups filed a motion for summary judgment on July 27. Like the states, the groups argued that the Secretary of the Interior lacked authority to stay compliance dates for an already-effective rule and that he could not alter the compliance dates without notice-and-comment rulemaking.

BLM and other federal defendants filed a notice of appeal of the federal court decision ruling that they could not postpone compliance with rule’s requirements without complying with the Administrative Procedure Act. In October 2017, the federal district court for the Northern District of California vacated a BLM rule that postponed the Waste Prevention Rule’s compliance dates for one year.

On October 4, the federal district court for the Northern District of California vacated the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) postponement of the compliance date for certain provisions of the methane waste rule, which was intended to reduce waste of natural gas through venting, flaring, and leaks during oil and gas production on federal and tribal lands. The rule took effect on January 17, 2017; on June 15, 2017, BLM issued a notice of postponement of January 17, 2018 compliance dates. The court held that BLM had acted outside its authority to postpone the “effective date” of a rule under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The court rejected the defendants’ argument that “effective date” in Section 705 also encompassed compliance dates; the court also found that BLM had violated the APA’s notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements. In addition, the court held that BLM’s postponement of the compliance dates was arbitrary and capricious because pending litigation challenging the review was not a true reason for the postponement, as required by Section 705, and because BLM “entirely failed” to consider the rule’s benefits in its determination that justice required postponement. The court stated: “New presidential administrations are entitled to change policy positions, but to meet the requirements of the APA they must give reasoned explanations for those changes and ‘address [the] prior factual findings’ underpinning a prior regulatory regime.” A day after the court’s decision, BLM published a proposed rule to temporarily suspend or delay certain requirements until January 17, 2019.

The California federal court denied the defendants' motion to transfer the case to the District of Wyoming where a challenge to the rule was pending.

On July 26, 2017, the states filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the Administrative Procedure Act did not authorize postponement of compliance states after the effective date for regulations had passed and that the postponement notice violated notice-and-comment requirements. The states also argued that BLM’s justification for postponement was arbitrary and capricious.