Bold Alliance v. U.S. Department of the Interior

In another case in Montana federal district court challenging Trump-era authorizations for the Keystone XL project, environmental groups, federal defendants, and the project’s developers stipulated to the voluntary dismissal without prejudice of a challenge to a right-of-way and a temporary use permit for the pipeline to cross federal land.

Environmental and conservation groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in Montana challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM’s) granting of a right-of-way and temporary use permit for Keystone XL to cross federal land in Montana. The court previously dismissed a claim against BLM without prejudice because BLM had yet to act. In the new complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that the revised documents that BLM relied on still violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and Administrative Procedure Act because the federal defendants made only a “cursory attempt to rectify the problems identified by the court” in its review of the cross-border permit issued by the Department of State. The plaintiffs alleged, among other things, that BLM based its decision, including a conclusion that climate impacts were minimal, on faulty environmental analyses, and that BLM therefore “failed to rationally assess whether granting a right-of-way for Keystone XL was consistent with the Bureau’s multiple-use mandate.”