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

Four environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Eastern District of California challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) approval of six drilling permits for new oil wells in the San Joaquin Valley. The groups asserted claims under the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Mineral Leasing Act, and the Freedom of Information Act. They contended that BLM had failed to account for climate and other impacts of continued expansion of oil and gas drilling on public lands and had approved the six permits despite having not completed a cumulative impacts analysis for its resource management plan that it agreed to conduct to resolve <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-us-bureau-of-land-management-4/">other</a> <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-us-bureau-of-land-management-2/">lawsuits</a>. With respect to climate change, the complaint alleged that BLM’s environmental assessment “entirely failed to quantify cumulative greenhouse gas emissions on a regional or national scale or allow for informed choices between alternatives including managed fossil fuel production decline on public land.”