Environmental Pulse

The First Regular Session of the 108th Nebraska Legislature adjourned sine die on June 1, 2023.  In our update during bill introduction (available here), we identified 58 bills relating to agricultural, environmental, natural-resources, and regulated-substances law.  This chart  provides the status of those bills.  Below are summaries of the 25 […]

Several major producers of PFAS chemicals agreed to settle a growing number of lawsuits alleging damages from contaminated waters. Major producers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (“PFAS”) substances agreed to resolve lawsuits against them concerning PFAS contamination of public water systems throughout the country. As part of a recent settlement yet […]

In Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the court held that an 1868 treaty reserved water rights but did not require the federal government to secure that water for the reservation. Under the Winters doctrine, the federal government’s reservation of land for an Indian tribe also implicitly reserves the right to use […]

In Nat’l Pork Producers Council v. Ross, the court rejected an industry challenge alleging that California’s animal-welfare law impermissibly regulated extraterritorial business operations. In 2018, the California Legislature passed Proposition 12. The proposition imposes standards on a number of products, including pork, as a condition of access to the California […]

Congress failed to override President Biden’s veto of legislation that would have resumed tariffs on solar panels imported from Southeast Asia. In only the third veto of his presidency, President Joe Biden recently blocked legislation that would have resumed import tariffs for solar panels produced in Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and […]