Federal judge orders environmental review before Keystone XL can continue News
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Federal judge orders environmental review before Keystone XL can continue

A US District Judge in Montana ruled [order, PDF] Wednesday that the US State Department must conduct a more thorough environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline project, ordering the $8 billion project’s construction to come to an immediate halt.

An environmental review was initially published for the pipeline’s original plans, which stretched from Canada through Nebraska. However, the Nebraska portion of the line’s path has since been revised. Nebraska regulators voted [JURIST report] in November to approve the new route.

US District Judge Brian Morris said in a partial order that TransCanada, the company constructing the pipeline, and the State Department “have yet to analyze the Mainline Alternative route” despite “possess[ing] the obligation to analyze new information relevant to the environmental impacts of its decision.”

“Federal Defendants cannot escape their responsibility [under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)] to evaluate the Mainline Alternative route,” Morris said.

Former president Barack Obama rejected the pipeline in 2015 on climate change grounds, but President Donald Trump gave [JURIST reports] the project a green light shortly after his inauguration in 2017 via a Presidential Permit. On Wednesday Morris declined to vacate this 2017 presidential permit completely.

Morris has not decided whether the project violates the National Environmental Policy Act or the Endangered Species Act and is set to release an opinion on that matter soon.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.