Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Columbia asking the court to set a deadline for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to issue a final listing rule for the green floater, a small freshwater mussel species in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast United States. CBD alleged that FWS had violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to publish a final rule or extend the deadline for publishing a final rule within one year of its July 26, 2023 proposal to list the green floater as a threatened species. The complaint alleged that the green floater “requires urgent protection at the federal level, as it is currently threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, degraded water quality and alterations in water flows, and faces compounded impacts from climate change, affecting its ability to survive and reproduce.”