California v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

The federal district court for the Northern District of California ruled that the Trump administration’s repeal of a rule promulgated by the Obama administration in 2015 regulating hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal lands did not violate the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), or the Endangered Species Act (ESA). As a threshold matter, the court found that California had standing for all its claims and that Citizen Group Plaintiffs had standing for claims under the ESA and NEPA but not under the APA. On the merits, the court concluded that the change in policy was not arbitrary and capricious under the APA, finding that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) “reasoned explanation” of the change “did enough to clear the low bar of arbitrary and capricious review.” The court was not persuaded by California’s critiques of the reversal, which included two main arguments: that BLM’s determination that the 2015 rule was duplicative of state and tribal regulation was negated by BLM’s earlier conclusions and that BLM ignored forgone benefits of the Obama-era rule in its cost-benefit analysis. The court declined to address the issue of whether BLM had authority to issue the 2015 rule. The court also agreed with the defendants that NEPA did not apply since the 2015 rule was never in effect and the “environmental status quo” therefore was not altered. (California’s NEPA claim was based in part on the defendants’ failure to consider potential significant adverse environmental impacts, including climate change harms.) Regarding the ESA, the court found that there was a “rational connection” between BLM’s “final position” that the repeal would have no effect on threatened species on BLM lands and the facts in the record.

The federal district court for the Northern District of California denied the federal government’s motion to transfer lawsuits challenging BLM’s repeal of 2015 regulations governing hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal lands. The federal defendants sought to transfer the lawsuits to the District of Wyoming, where a judge heard challenges to the 2015 regulations and ultimately vacated the regulations as outside BLM’s authority. (The Tenth Circuit vacated that holding in 2017.) The California federal court concluded that although the lawsuits could have been brought in Wyoming, the balance of the transfer factors weighed against transfer. The court was not persuaded that there was a risk of judicial inconsistency or that judicial economy weighed strongly in favor of transfer. The court said that “[t]hough there are some broadly related factual subject matter areas underlying the [hydraulic fracturing] Rule and the rule rescinding it, these commonalities are unlikely to save either court considerable time.” On the other hand, plaintiffs’ choice of forum and convenience weighed against transfer. The court also granted two motions to intervene, one by the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Western Energy Alliance, and the other by the American Petroleum Institute. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ request that the intervenors be limited to filing one joint brief.

On June 18, California notified the district court in the Northern District of California of two district court decisions—one in New York and the other in South Carolina—denying motions to transfer challenges to the Waters of the United States rule to other venues. The federal defendants in the challenge to the hydraulic fracturing rule moved in March 2018 to transfer the challenges to the District of Wyoming.

In the federal lawsuits in the Northern District of California challenging BLM’s repeal of the regulations governing hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal lands, the federal defendants and California (one of the plaintiffs) each filed a notice to inform the court of recent relevant decisions in other courts. On June 4, 2018, the federal defendants notified the court of the Tenth Circuit’s denial of motions to dismiss as moot the appeals of the District of Wyoming’s 2015 decision invalidating the hydraulic fracturing rule. In September 2017, the Tenth Circuit found that the appeals were prudentially unripe because BLM was in the process of rescinding the rule. The Tenth Circuit therefore dismissed the appeals and also directed that the District of Wyoming’s 2015 decision be vacated. After BLM finalized the regulations’ repeal in December 2017 and before the Tenth Circuit’s mandate issued, North Dakota and the Ute Indian Tribe moved to have the appeals dismissed as moot to revive the District of Wyoming’s decision. The Tenth Court denied those motions.

On January 24, 2018, California filed an action in the federal district court for the Northern District of California challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) decision to repeal 2015 regulations that govern hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal lands. California’s complaint alleged that BLM’s repeal of the regulations violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and several federal land management statutes (Mineral Leasing Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and Indian Mineral Leasing Act). California’s NEPA claim was based in part on the defendants’ failure to consider potential significant adverse environmental impacts, including climate change harms.