General Land Office of the State of Texas v. U.S. Department of the Interior

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) decision denying a petition to delist the golden-cheeked warbler was arbitrary and capricious because the FWS applied “an inappropriately heightened” standard to its review of the delisting petition. The court said the FWS should not have required that the petition contain information that the FWS had not considered in its five-year review of the species that was sufficient to refute the five-year review’s conclusions that the warbler should remain listed. The Fifth Circuit’s opinion did not mention climate change, but climate change was one of the additional threats to the warbler that the FWS said the delisting petition failed to present information to address.