HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen today called on federal courts promote responsible energy production on federal land by stopping manipulative abuses of procedure environmental standards.

In an amicus brief filed today in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Knudsen asked the full court to review a panel decision that sent a permit to expand the Bull Mountains Mine in Roundup, Montana back to a lower court.

“The panel’s far-reaching conclusion stepped beyond the well-settled role courts play when reviewing agency NEPA decisions,” Attorney General Knudsen said in the brief. “The panel majority’s decision is yet another, uniquely egregious example of innovating courts’ willingness to transform NEPA’s straightforward procedural requirements into a regulatory thicket from which agency decisions can rarely—if ever—emerge. 

Click here to read the full amicus brief.