News Archive

Members of Congress, Tribes, and state governments submitted briefs on September 23 in support of shutting down the Dakota Access Pipeline to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, including an amicus curiae brief filed by Hillary Hoffmann, the Robert H. McKinney Family Chair in Environmental Law at IU McKinney School of Law, and two colleagues from Vermont Law School.

The issue is whether the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should affirm the decision of a federal judge in July. U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered that the easement across Lake Oahe be shut down pending an environmental impact statement examining the impacts the Dakota Access Pipeline would have on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The case is now on appeal before the D.C. Circuit, which has scheduled a hearing for Nov. 4.

“Our brief argues that the Army Corps’ approach to NEPA review [pre construction] essentially gutted the statute’s ‘look before you leap’ requirements and without vacatur and a thorough NEPA review, the Army Corps has effectively been allowed to abrogate the tribal treaty rights in the lake and the unceded tribal lands surrounding the Missouri River,” Professor Hoffmann says.

Hoffmann is Professor of Law at the University of Vermont and the first Robert H. McKinney Family Chair in Environmental Law at IU McKinney School of Law, a visiting position for the fall 2020 semester.

She is co-author of a new book, A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection and has commented extensively on current issues related to federal public lands, tribal rights, and tribal sovereignty, including the controversy related to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.