North Dakota v. U.S. Department of the Interior

The State of North Dakota filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of North Dakota challenging the amended Resource Management Plan (RMP) for federal lands in the state approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the final days of the Biden administration. North Dakota alleged that the amended RMP imposed “draconian and irrational restrictions on the development of traditional energy resources,” including by prohibiting future development of federally owned coal interests outside a four-mile radius from current development. The State alleged that this prohibition would prohibit development of more than 90% of the known federal coal acreage in North Dakota and have an “extremely substantial” impact on development of State- and privately owned coal interests. The State claimed that the RMP and the final environmental impact statement underlying it violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), the Mineral Leasing Act, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The NEPA-related allegations included that BLM failed to take a hard look at the impacts of a decrease in mining efficiency, including impacts on mining emissions. Under the APA, the State contended, among other arguments, that BLM improperly relied on President Biden’s Executive Order 13990 on “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science To Tackle the Climate Crisis” and the 2023 Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases Guidance to justify the amended RMP, thereby “promoting climate change goals over FLPMA’s multiple use mandate.” The State alleged that the executive order and guidance were not binding law and that “their pronouncements about global climate damages justifying domestic rulemakings cannot contradict FLPMA’s statutory mandates.”