Event

Supreme Court 2021 Term Roundup: Environmental Law and the States

Tuesday, July 19 12:30 - 1:45 ET CLE Credit Image of the U.S. Supreme Court building within a U.S. map showing state borders.
  • Tuesday, July 19, 2022
  • 12:30pm–1:45pm ET
  • Online Event

Join appel­late advo­cates and state Solic­i­tors Gen­er­al on Tues­day, July 19 from 12:30pm — 1:45pm ET for a con­ver­sa­tion about the term’s cas­es and the impact that those cas­es could have on states and envi­ron­men­tal law. This pro­gram is co-host­ed by the State Ener­gy & Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Cen­ter and the State and Local Legal Center.

Reg­is­tra­tion is required. A con­fir­ma­tion email will include a link to join the webi­nar. We encour­age you to sub­mit ques­tions in advance to tiernaur.​[email protected]​nyu.​edu. We will also take ques­tions dur­ing the webi­nar using the Q&A feature. 

Please note, CLE cred­it is only avail­able for par­tic­i­pants who attend­ed the event live. You can­not receive cred­it by view­ing the recording.

Speak­ers

Benjamin Gutman

Ben­jamin Gutman

Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al, Ore­gon Attor­ney General

Ben Gut­man serves as the solic­i­tor gen­er­al in the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Jus­tice. Ben and his team rep­re­sent the state in cas­es on appeal in the Unit­ed States and Ore­gon Supreme Courts. Before becom­ing the solic­i­tor gen­er­al, Ben was the chief admin­is­tra­tive judge and west­ern region­al direc­tor for the U.S. Mer­it Sys­tems Pro­tec­tion Board. He also was a mem­ber of the fed­er­al government’s senior exec­u­tive ser­vice. Ear­li­er in his career, he served as deputy solic­i­tor gen­er­al for the State of New York and as an appel­late attor­ney for the U.S. Equal Employ­ment Oppor­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion. Ben has a B.A. magna cum laude in math and phi­los­o­phy from Yale Col­lege and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as exec­u­tive edi­tor of the Yale Law Journal.

Mithun Mansinghani

Mithun Mans­ing­hani

Part­ner, Lehot­sky Keller LLP; For­mer Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al, Okla­homa Attor­ney General

Mithun Mans­ing­hani is Part­ner at Lehot­sky Keller LLP. He served as Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al for the State of Okla­homa. He was appoint­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mike Hunter in 2017 after serv­ing for the pri­or two years as Deputy Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al. As Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al, Mr. Mans­ing­hani led lit­i­ga­tion on behalf of the State in appeals, con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters, and rela­tions with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and oth­er states. This includ­ed rep­re­sent­ing the State in cas­es before the Okla­homa Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Pri­or to join­ing the Okla­homa Attor­ney General’s Office, Mr. Mans­ing­hani was a lawyer for Gib­son, Dunn & Crutch­er in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., spe­cial­iz­ing in appeals and admin­is­tra­tive law cas­es. Mr. Mans­ing­hani also served as a law clerk to the Hon­or­able Jer­ry E. Smith on the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Cir­cuit. He received his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in both polit­i­cal sci­ence and pol­i­cy stud­ies from Rice Uni­ver­si­ty and his law degree with hon­ors from Har­vard Law School, where he served as edi­tor of the Har­vard Law Review.

Lindsay See

Lind­say See

Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al, West Vir­ginia Attor­ney General

Lind­say See is cur­rent­ly the Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al for West Vir­ginia, where she man­ages appel­late and high-stakes lit­i­ga­tion for the State of West Vir­ginia in both state and fed­er­al courts. Her work also focus­es on reg­u­la­to­ry and admin­is­tra­tive law issues, as well as lead­ing and work­ing with mul­ti-state coali­tions on a vari­ety of nation­al issues. Before mov­ing to West Vir­ginia, Lind­say clerked for the Hon. Thomas B. Grif­fith on the D.C. cir­cuit, then spent sev­er­al years prac­tic­ing appel­late and admin­is­tra­tive law with Gib­son, Dunn & Crutch­er in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Steven Wu

Steven Wu

Chief of Appeals, Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney’s Office; For­mer Deputy Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al, New York Attor­ney General

Steven C. Wu is Chief of Appeals at the Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney’s Office. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he served as Deputy Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al in the New York State Office of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al. He joined the office in 2008 and pre­vi­ous­ly served as an Assis­tant Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al and as Spe­cial Coun­sel to the Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al. Before join­ing the Attor­ney General’s Office, he was an asso­ciate in the Supreme Court and Appel­late Prac­tice of the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and a law clerk to Judge Diana Grib­bon Motz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Cir­cuit. He is a grad­u­ate of Har­vard Col­lege and Yale Law School. As Deputy Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al, Steven’s prac­tice focused on appel­late lit­i­ga­tion in both fed­er­al and state courts. He reg­u­lar­ly appeared in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit and the New York Court of Appeals (the high­est court in New York), and has also argued in the U.S. Supreme Court, the D.C. Cir­cuit, the First Cir­cuit, and the Fourth Circuit.

Mod­er­a­tor

Kirti Datla

Kir­ti Datla

Direc­tor of Strate­gic Legal Advo­ca­cy, Earthjustice

In her role at Earth­jus­tice, Kir­ti leads efforts to antic­i­pate and shape trends in judi­cial doc­trine out­side the envi­ron­men­tal are­na. This includes legal doc­trines affect­ing jus­ti­cia­bil­i­ty, juris­dic­tion, the scope of fed­er­al pow­er, and judi­cial review of agency actions. Imme­di­ate­ly pri­or to join­ing Earth­jus­tice, Kir­ti worked in the Supreme Court and Appel­late prac­tice group at Hogan Lovells US LLP. There, she briefed and argued appeals before fed­er­al cir­cuit courts and sub­stan­tive motions before fed­er­al dis­trict courts. She also briefed cas­es before the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States. Ear­li­er in her career, Kir­ti served as an attor­ney-advis­er in the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice’s Office of Legal Coun­sel, where her work focused on fed­er­al envi­ron­men­tal and land statutes. There, she reviewed the legal­i­ty of pres­i­den­tial orders; advised fed­er­al agen­cies on major ques­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al, statu­to­ry, and admin­is­tra­tive law; and exam­ined pend­ing leg­is­la­tion for con­sti­tu­tion­al issues. Kir­ti has served as a law clerk at all lev­els of the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry: for Asso­ciate Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Jef­frey S. Sut­ton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, and Judge Amul R. Tha­par, then of the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of Ken­tucky (now of the Sixth Cir­cuit). She received her B.A. in envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing from Rice Uni­ver­si­ty and her law degree from the NYU School of Law.

Written Materials

This event has been approved for one New York State CLE cred­it in the cat­e­go­ry of Areas of Pro­fes­sion­al Prac­tice. The cred­it is both tran­si­tion­al and non-tran­si­tion­al; it is appro­pri­ate for both expe­ri­enced and new­ly admit­ted attorneys.

Out-of-state CLE: NYU School of Law is an accred­it­ed provider of CLE in New York State. If you are seek­ing CLE cred­it for a dif­fer­ent state, we rec­om­mend you con­sult with your state’s CLE Board to ascer­tain reg­u­la­tions on reciprocity.

Supreme Court Cases

2021 Term — Argued or Decided

  • Mis­sis­sip­pi v. Ten­nessee (decid­ed 11/22/21)
    • Hold­ing: The waters of the Mid­dle Clai­borne Aquifer are sub­ject to the judi­cial rem­e­dy of equi­table appor­tion­ment; Mississippi’s com­plaint is dis­missed with­out leave to amend.
  • New York State Rifle & Pos­til Assn., Inc. v. Bru­en (decid­ed 6/23/22)
    • Issue(s): Whether the state of New York’s denial of peti­tion­ers’ appli­ca­tions for con­cealed-car­ry licens­es for self-defense vio­lat­ed the Sec­ond Amendment.
  • U.S. v. Vael­lo Madero (decid­ed 4/21/22)
    • Hold­ing: The Con­sti­tu­tion does not require Con­gress to extend Sup­ple­men­tal Secu­ri­ty Income ben­e­fits to res­i­dents of Puer­to Rico.
  • Biden v. Mis­souri (decid­ed 1/13/22)
    • Issue(s): (1) Whether 8 U.S.C. § 1225 requires the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty to con­tin­ue imple­ment­ing the Migrant Pro­tec­tion Pro­to­cols, a for­mer pol­i­cy under which cer­tain nonci­t­i­zens arriv­ing at the south­west bor­der were returned to Mex­i­co dur­ing their immi­gra­tion pro­ceed­ings; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Cir­cuit erred by con­clud­ing that the sec­re­tary of home­land security’s new deci­sion ter­mi­nat­ing MPP had no legal effect.
  • Ari­zona v. San Fran­cis­co, CA (dis­missed 6/15/22)
    • Issue(s): (1) Whether states with inter­ests should be per­mit­ted to inter­vene to defend a rule when the Unit­ed States ceas­es to defend.
  • West Vir­ginia v. EPA (decid­ed 6/30/22)
    • Issue(s): Whether, in 42 U.S.C. § 7411(d), an ancillary pro­vi­sion of the Clean Air Act, Con­gress con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly autho­rized the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency to issue sig­nif­i­cant rules — includ­ing those capa­ble of reshap­ing the nation’s elec­tric­i­ty grids and uni­lat­er­al­ly decar­boniz­ing vir­tu­al­ly any sec­tor of the econ­o­my — with­out any lim­its on what the agency can require so long as it con­sid­ers cost, non­air impacts and ener­gy requirements.
  • Tor­res v. Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safe­ty (decid­ed 6/29/22)
    • Issue(s): Whether Con­gress has the pow­er to autho­rize suits against non­con­sent­ing states pur­suant to its con­sti­tu­tion­al war powers.
  • Viking Riv­er Cruis­es, Inc. (decid­ed 6/15/22)
  • Okla­homa v. Cas­tro-Huer­ta (decid­ed 6/29/22)
    • Issue(s): Whether a state has author­i­ty to pros­e­cute non-Indi­ans who com­mit crimes against Indi­ans in Indi­an country.

2022 Term — Not yet set for argument

  • Sack­ett v. EPA
    • Issue(s): Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Cir­cuit set forth the prop­er test for deter­min­ing whether wet­lands are ​“waters of the Unit­ed States” under the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1362(7).
  • Nation­al Pork Pro­duc­ers Coun­cil v. Ross
    • Issue(s): (1) Whether alle­ga­tions that a state law has dra­mat­ic eco­nom­ic effects large­ly out­side of the state and requires per­va­sive changes to an inte­grat­ed nation­wide indus­try state a vio­la­tion of the dor­mant com­merce clause, or whether the extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty prin­ci­ple described in the Supreme Court’s deci­sions is now a dead let­ter; and (2) whether such alle­ga­tions, con­cern­ing a law that is based sole­ly on pref­er­ences regard­ing out-of-state hous­ing of farm ani­mals, state a claim under Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc.

Pub­li­ca­tions