Last Thursday, the Supreme Court tried to balance the federal regulation of point-source pollution with states’ regulation of nonpoint-source pollution under the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion left as many questions as answers, however, as it created a new “functional equivalent” standard, but failed to define what constitutes the “functional equivalent” of a “direct discharge.” In short, a […]

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Federal Appeals Court Rejects Climate Change Case   On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ended a suit brought by children against the U.S. government for neglecting to take proper action to prevent climate change. Though it had collected some victories on its journey to the Ninth Circuit, the issues at hand are not meant to be decided in this venue. The ruling acknowledges that the government has long […]

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In late April, in the ongoing case Ramirez v. Exxon Mobil Corp., et al., Exxon urged a Texas federal court to deny class certification to investors alleging the company withheld knowledge of climate change costs and misrepresented those costs publicly. Exxon is arguing that the alleged misrepresentations had no significant impact on the share price of the company’s stock and therefore the plaintiffs should be denied class certification because there […]

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