Marc Bruner

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Can a city protect itself from discriminatory zoning claims by adopting a facially neutral ordinance that treats similarly situated land uses the same? Apparently not, said the Ninth Circuit in Pacific Shores Properties v. City of Newport Beach (Case No. 11-55460), decided on September 20. In a challenge brought against a City of Newport Beach zoning ordinance imposing restrictions on group homes, the court ruled that the plaintiffs could prevail merely by showing that the City acted with discriminatory animus.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Clarifies Standards For Housing Discrimination Claims

On September 17, 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the release of a draft scientific report that is widely seen as a prelude to upcoming regulations that would significantly expand federal permitting jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. See our update for more information about the draft report, which is titled “Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands to Downstream Waters: A Review and Synthesis of the Scientific Evidence.”…
Continue Reading EPA Publishes Draft Scientific Report To Support Significant Expansion of Clean Water Act Jurisdiction

Can a district court “approve resolution of litigation involving a federal agency though a consent decree, which substantially and permanently amends regulations that the agency could only otherwise amend by complying with statutory required rulemaking procedures”?  The Ninth Circuit’s answer was no.  Conservation Northwest v. Sherman (9th Cir. Case No. 11-35729, Apr. 25, 2013). 

The…

Friends and foes of fracking in California have, for the most part, fought their battles in the policy and legislative arenas.  But the federal district court in San Jose recently chimed in, striking down four oil and gas leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management for 2,700 acres of federal lands overlying the Monterey…

Is rain water washing over utility poles and carrying wood preservatives into waterways the kind of pollution that violates the Clean Water Act or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act?

No, according to a recent decision by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

There is no Clean Water Act violation because the pollution discharge…

In 2006, the voters of Kern County adopted “Measure E,” an initiative which sought to prohibit the use of agricultural fertilizer made from recycled municipal sewage sludge.  Land application of this material, referred to in the industry as “biosolids,” is a widespread and comprehensively regulated form of recycling.  Many local waste management systems depend on…

In approving a project to repair a flood-damaged road in a national forest in Nevada, the U.S. Forest Service adopted a “Selected Alternative” that combined elements from three different alternatives that were evaluated in the Environmental Impact Statement for the project.  In upholding the Forest Service’s approval, the Ninth Circuit rejected the project opponents’ claims …

In July 2012, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Salazar, 686 F.3d 1092 (9th Cir. 2012),  that the decision by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to renew a series of water service contracts in connection with the Central Valley Project did not constitute “agency action”…