The U.S. Supreme Court Friday morning (October 4) announced that it will accept the appeal by Atlantic Coast Pipeline, LLC (ACP, LLC) of the Cowpasture River, et. al. vs Forest Service. A date for oral arguments of the case has not been set.
The chances of the case being heard by the Court had been bolstered by the fact that the Solicitor General of the United States filed a brief in support of the appeal, as did 16 Republican state Attorneys General. It is also worth noting that the Solicitor General’s boss, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, is a former Board of Directors member of Dominion Energy.
More about this case will be discussed in next week’s ABRA Update. In the meantime, construction on the ACP is still held up by the lack of a valid permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That agency’s biological opinion on the project’s impact on endangered species has been thrown out twice by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The agency is now drafting new permit language.