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Fox News
9 hours ago
- General
- Fox News
Supreme Court declines to examine appeals over Maryland, Rhode Island gun control laws
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear two cases challenging separate state bans on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines on Monday. The court declined to hear cases arising out of Maryland and Rhode Island relating to state regulations on AR-15-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, respectively. The cases had been submitted to the Supreme Court after lower courts upheld the bans in the face of challenges. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with the majority's decision and said they would have liked to have reviewed the cases. With respect to the Maryland ban, the Supreme Court's decision upholds the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling, which states that authority to ban AR-15-style rifles is consistent with the 2nd Amendment. The 4th Circuit argued in its ruling that granting AR-15s constitutional protection based on their common use would mean that any dangerous weapon "could gain constitutional protection merely because it becomes popular before the government can sufficiently regulate it." Lawyers arguing against the ban claimed the Supreme Court had a duty to "ensure that the Second Amendment itself is not truncated into a limited right to own certain state-approved means of personal self-defense." While the court declined to take up the issue in this case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that, "In my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon." Thomas, one of the three justices who sought to review the Maryland case now, was more blunt in his dissent. "I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America," Thomas wrote. "That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR-15 owners throughout the country." The gun cases come as the Supreme Court has been inundated with challenges to President Donald Trump's agenda, from his economic and regulatory policies to his anti-illegal immigration efforts. The Supreme Court is expected to hand down rulings relating to several of these topics in the coming weeks.
CBS News
3 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Supreme Court deals blow to opponents of plan to move oil along Colorado river
The United States Supreme Court, in a decision out Thursday, overruled a lower court in favor of a plan to construct an 88-mile railroad in Utah that would link with Colorado rail lines as a route to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil daily to the Gulf Coast for refining. The plan calls for trains loaded with waxy crude extracted from the Uinta Basin area of Utah to pass along rail lines along the Colorado River, including through Glenwood Canyon. Uinta Basin Railway The unanimous ruling, with Justice Neil Gorsuch abstaining, deals a blow to a consortium of environmental groups and Eagle County, which oppose the plan. The Supreme Court cited a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that indicated the Surface Transportation Board, which has oversight in approving the rail construction project, did not adequately include a study of all important issues relating to the environmental effects of the project, including oil drilling and refining at its eventual destination. Such a study is required under the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. The completed study was 3,600 pages, and the Supreme Court said the requirements called for by the lower court were too much. CBS Writing the majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated, "Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock. The goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it." "They definitely told the circuit courts to, 'Hey, you need to knock this off.' But it was all based off of Supreme Court decisions that have been going on for quite some time," said Jonathan Stearmer, legal counsel for a seven-county group backing the rail line construction. A past ruling, Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen, called for lessening the red tape associated with NEPA, saying federal agencies need not study environmental consequences that lie outside their jurisdiction. "I think what won the day is that our position that we decided to take in the case was already the Supreme Court's position from 20-plus years ago. There were a couple circuit courts across the country that have chosen not to follow that Supreme Court precedent, and so it created a split in the circuits," said Stearmer. CBS In Colorado, there were objections to the Supreme Court's ruling about the Uinta project. "We're sorry to see the Supreme Court conclude that under this environmental review process, the Surface Transportation Board can ignore some of the harmful environmental impacts that come from this project," said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. "They take a very narrow approach here, and they are allowing the Surface Transportation Board latitude to allow this project to go forward with some real harms." An attorney for Eagle County, Nate Hunt, said the ruling was not a complete loss, pointing out that there are still some issues ruled on unanimously in the Circuit Court that the Supreme Court left standing. "It ruled on a litany of issues that it deemed that the Surface Transportation Board had violated, not just under NEPA, but under three other federal statutes. None of those issues were appealed to the Supreme Court," said Hunt. Stearmer noted that the potential for damage from the waxy crude that would be shipped out of the Uinta Basin would be lessened in a spill because the oil is more like wax at ambient temperature and less damaging. "I think that's a nonsensical argument. This project would facilitate millions of gallons of waxy, crude oil being transferred across Colorado through the Rocky Mountains on two-mile trains and within a stone's throw of the Colorado River," said Hunt. He said Eagle County and the environmental groups would continue to try to stop the project. But the court's ruling could affect other environmental issues. "The Supreme Court's decision on what NEPA means is going to be nationwide. It's going to affect how projects all over the country are going to be reviewed under NEPA."
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Supreme Court Curbs Scope of Environmental Reviews
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that a federal agency had done enough to consider the environmental impact of a proposed 88-mile railway in Utah. The ruling limits the scope of environmental reviews required by federal law in all sorts of settings. The proposed railway would connect oil fields in the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah to a national rail network that runs next to the Colorado River and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast. 'An agency may weigh environmental consequences as the agency reasonably sees fit,' Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for five justices. The court's three liberal members agreed with the decision's bottom line but on narrower grounds. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was recused. The Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that regulates rail transportation, approved the Utah project in 2021 after conducting a review that yielded a 3,600-page report. Environmental groups and a Colorado county sued, saying the report had not taken account of some ways in which the railway could do harm to the environment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled for the challengers. The environmental impact statements required by a 1970 federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act, can be quite elaborate. Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing seven Utah counties that support the project, told the justices when the case was argued in December that the law was 'the single most litigated environmental statute.' He added that the board had acted responsibly. 'It consulted with dozens of agencies, considered every proximate effect and ordered 91 mitigation measures,' he said, referring to measures intended to, among other things, dampen noise pollution and protect wildlife. 'Eighty-eight miles of track should not require more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis.' William M. Jay, a lawyer for the challengers, said at the argument that the report did not consider all the reasonably foreseeable results of the project, like oil spills and sparks that can cause wildfires, as required by the federal law. The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colo., No. 23-975, was argued before an eight-member court after Justice Gorsuch recused himself, apparently over concerns that his ties to Philip F. Anschutz gave rise to a conflict of interest. Neither Mr. Anschutz, a billionaire and Republican donor, nor his companies are parties to the case, and the letter announcing Justice Gorsuch's recusal gave no reasons. But the proposed railway could benefit companies in which Mr. Anschutz has an interest. Justice Gorsuch represented Mr. Anschutz and his companies as a lawyer, benefited from his support when he was being considered for a seat on an appeals court and once served as a keynote speaker at an annual party at his ranch.
