Citizens for Clean Energy v. U.S. Department of Interior

The federal district court for the District of Montana granted the State of Wyoming’s motion to intervene in a lawsuit brought by four states to challenge the Department of the Interior’s lifting of the Obama administration’s moratorium on the federal coal leasing program. The court said Wyoming met the standard for intervention as of right because it contained a number of coal leases affected by the moratorium and because it occupied a different position than the United States due to its “unique interests as a high volume coal producing state.”

The federal district court for the District of Montana vacated and remanded the final environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) prepared for former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s 2017 order that terminated a NEPA review of the federal coal leasing program ordered by former Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and directed BLM to resume issuing coal leases. The court previously ruled that Zinke’s order constituted major federal action requiring NEPA review. At issue in this case was whether BLM’s subsequent review satisfied National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements. As an initial matter, the court held that Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s order revoking Secretary Zinke’s order did not moot the claims because the coal leasing moratorium put in place by former Secretary Jewell remained revoked. On the merits, the court found that BLM’s environmental assessment did not satisfy NEPA and Administrative Procedure Act requirements because its limited analysis of four leases deemed traceable to the Zinke order failed to consider all direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of restarting the coal leasing program. The court said BLM should have used a status quo of a moratorium on coal leasing as its baseline alternative and should not have presumed that the moratorium was limited to the three-year period anticipated for completion of the programmatic environmental impact statement for the coal leasing program. The court further found that BLM “arbitrarily curtailed” even its assessment of the four leases’ impacts. The court reinstated the moratorium pending completion of sufficient NEPA review.

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In an unpublished memorandum, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a lawsuit challenging former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s 2017 rescission of an Obama administration moratorium on the federal coal leasing program was moot because Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland had “revoked” the Zinke order in April 2021. The Ninth Circuit said a district court had incorrectly concluded that Secretary Haaland’s failure to reinstate the moratorium meant that the Zinke order remained in partial effect; the Ninth Circuit said any injury related to the absence of a moratorium was not fairly traceable to the revoked Zinke order. The Ninth Circuit also found that the voluntary cessation exception to mootness did not apply.

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In a case that successfully challenged Trump administration decisions to revoke a moratorium on the federal coal leasing program, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied without prejudice conservations organizations’ motion to dismiss appeals of District of Montana rulings in 2019 and 2022 that remanded to federal defendants for review under NEPA. In their motion to dismiss the appeals by Wyoming, Montana, and the National Mining Association, the organizations argued that appeal of the 2019 order was time-barred and that the 2022 order was not an appealable final decision because the order vacated and remanded to federal agencies, who chose not to appeal. The Ninth Circuit said the organizations could renew these arguments in their merits briefing.