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

On July 16, 2025, Center for Biological Diversity, the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club, along with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other federal defendants, filed a stipulation of dismissal without prejudice in the environmental organizations’ lawsuit challenging BLM’s approval of 10 new oil wells in the San Joaquin Valley. The parties filed the stipulation one month after the defendants sought judgment on the pleadings on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing and several months after the court granted the plaintiffs leave to file a second amended complaint with additional details regarding standing. The plaintiffs filed a <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-us-bureau-of-land-management-7/">related case</a> in February 2025 challenging more recent BLM approvals of oil wells in the area.

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.”