President's weekly report — January 3, 2014

January 03, 2014 | By ROB RIVETT

Environment — Endangered Species — Riverside Fairy Shrimp

We filed this amicus brief in Otay Mesa Property v. United States Department of Interior on Monday.  In this case, we support a San Diego County property owner’s challenge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to designate the property as critical habitat for the Riverside fairy shrimp.  We focus on two issues:  (1) We argue that the Service’s cost analysis for the rule is flawed because the Service applied the “baseline” method for evaluating costs, which omits any cost that might be partly attributable to some action other than the decision to designate critical habitat.  (2) We argue that the Service’s decision to forgo NEPA review of its rule is erroneous.  As described this 2011 blog post, we previously filed an amicus brief when the case was up at the Court of Appeals.