Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

In a lawsuit filed in the federal district court for the Eastern District of California, Center for Biological Diversity and four other organizations challenged the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) approval of 25 permits for drilling new oil and gas wells on public lands in the San Joaquin Valley. The plaintiffs alleged that BLM approved the permits in December 2024 and January 2025 “without waiting for this court to resolve the <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-us-bureau-of-land-management-6/">current ongoing challenge</a> to BLM’s flawed review of drilling permits” and without analyzing the cumulative pollution impacts of the wells it was permitting. They alleged that “BLM’s repeated, piecemeal permit approvals without due regard for cumulative impacts represent a death by a thousand cuts that federal law is meant to prevent.” The complaint asserted that BLM violated the Clean Air Act, the public participation and substantive requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (including by failing to take a hard look at the drilling permits’ direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts on greenhouse gas emissions), the Mineral Leasing Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.