By Ilana Morady, Patrick Joyce, and Adam Young
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Cal/OSHA Standards Board was ready to vote on Cal/OSHA’s indoor heat rule at the March 21, 2024 Standards Board meeting, but at the 11th hour, the Board was ordered to cancel its scheduled vote.
Quick Summary
In a surprising development, the Cal/OSHA indoor
On March 11, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the long-awaited Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention Rule (Final Rule), which concluded a nearly decadelong process — spanning three administrations — to update EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) under the Clean Air Act (CAA).
In a partially published (but mostly unpublished) opinion filed on March 7, 2024, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s judgment and writ-discharge order which had upheld Kern County’s most recently revised “streamlined permitting” ordinance for oil and gas wells and its associated CEQA review. V Lions Farming, LLC v. County of Kern, et al. (California Independent Petroleum Association, et al., Real Parties) (2024) 100 Cal.App.5th 412. The Court of Appeal instead directed entry of a judgment and writ setting aside the County’s revised ordinance and related certification of a revised supplemental recirculated EIR (SREIR) and addendum. It held (in unpublished portions of its opinion) that the SREIR’s discussion of cancer risk from the potential drilling of multiple wells near a sensitive receptor was informationally deficient, and that the County also erred in analyzing the significance of lowering groundwater levels in wells by misconstruing CEQA to prohibit consideration of the social and economic impacts on disadvantaged communities in making that significance determination. (These and other unpublished portions of the opinion will not be discussed in any further detail in this post.)
The court’s decision is the latest development in the litigation over the SEC’s final rules, which have faced numerous legal challenges since their adoption.
By Paul A. Davies, Sarah E. Fortt, and Betty M. Huber
On March 15, 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted an administrative stay of
In line with the goals set forth in the Federal Government’s Federal Sustainability Plan, the General Services Administration (“GSA”) recently issued a Request for Information (“RFI”) stating its intent to acquire approximately 2,700,000 MWh of carbon pollution-free (“CFE”)[1] retail electricity supply annually for a term of up to 10 years in the PJM Interconnection/Regional Transmission Operator (“PJM/RTO”)[2] region. The RFI sought information from companies capable of providing CFE, including Bundled CFE[3], to Federal Government agencies and facilities in the PJM region. The RFI noted that a solicitation could be released in the next couple of months and award(s) could be made as early as September 2024, with the first electricity flowing by mid-December 2024.
On October 17, 2023, California Attorney General (AG) Rob Bonta released an enforcement advisory letter1 to manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of food packaging and cookware detailing how he intends to enforce AB 1200.2 The law bans the sale of regulated per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in food packaging in California, and also requires disclosure and labeling of chemicals on a “designated list,” including PFAS, that are present in the food contact surface or the handle of cookware products sold in California.
Since the individual laws do not provide specific enforcement mechanisms, this announcement is the first time the AG’s office has articulated the authorities it plans to use to enforce these laws. The enforcement advisory letter provides a clear warning to the regulated community, from manufacturers to importers to distributors and retailers, that California will be enforcing its PFAS laws. Similar advisories could be issued in the future for California’s other laws restricting the sale of juvenile products, textiles, and cosmetics containing PFAS.
Over the past several years, circular economy goals have become nearly ubiquitous in corporate sustainability strategies.
This trend is driven by a number of factors, including consumer interest in sustainable products, opportunities for generating circular revenue — i.e., generating revenue at multiple points in a product’s life cycle, such as through product collection and refurbishing — and the presence of circular economy metrics in commonly used voluntary sustainability standards, such as those issued by the Global Reporting Initiative and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.
On February 28, 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) published a news release regarding the voluntary market phase-out of per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in grease-proofing substances used on food packaging. The FDA stated that the completion of this phase-out “eliminates the primary source of dietary exposure to PFAS from authorized food contact uses.”
By Adam R. Young and Aaron M. Gillett
1. A Nightmare Acquisition
Your Company has recently acquired a small logistics company with a strong business reputation. Eighteen days after the acquisition was finalized, you receive a call that there has been a tragic forklift accident in a warehouse operated by a subsidiary of the newly
GHG Emissions: SEC Adopts New Climate Risk and Emissions Disclosure Rule
On March 6, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a new rule which will require publicly traded companies to disclose to potential investors their climate risks and levels of greenhouse gas emissions. These companies must report all climate risks that have had