Judge tosses Standing Rock’s latest suit over Dakota Access

A federal judge has dismissed the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers seeking to shutter the Dakota Access Pipeline, finding that the tribe must wait until the Army Corps finishes a key environmental study to bring another legal challenge against the agency.

“No matter its frustration with Defendants’ sluggish pace, it is not yet entitled to a second bite at the apple,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in a Friday order.

Standing Rock filed the lawsuit in October, arguing the Corps is violating federal law by allowing the pipeline to operate without an easement. The tribe also claimed that the Corps failed to properly study the environmental impacts of the pipeline or require its developer to prepare adequate spill response plans, among other alleged violations.

The suit is a successor to a lawsuit the tribe filed against the same agency in 2016.

In that case, Boasberg in 2020 found the Army Corps had violated federal law by not conducting a full environmental impact study before granting an easement allowing the pipeline to cross under the Missouri River. He pulled the easement and ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline to be drained of oil pending the Corps’ completion of the study.

An appellate court in 2021 reversed Boasberg’s decision to shut down the pipeline, but did not reinstate the easement.

Boasberg wrote in a 2021 order following that decision that he could not shutter the pipeline because the tribe hadn’t sufficiently demonstrated that it posed an immediate threat of irreparable harm. He noted in his Friday memo that “remarkably little” has changed in the four years since.

The Army Corps still has not finished the environmental impact study. It published a draft version of its report in late 2023.

Boasberg noted that Standing Rock can file another lawsuit against the Corps once the study is published. The Corps in legal filings also argued the tribe cannot sue the Corps over the easement when it had not yet made a final decision on the permit.

Iowa was among the states that intervened in the lawsuit on the side of the Corps. The intervenors called on the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the pipeline is important to the country’s economy, and that shutting it down would violate states’ rights and make road and rail transit less safe.

The pipeline, which spans more than 1,000 miles, carries crude oil from northwest North Dakota to Illinois.

This article first appeared in the North Dakota Monitor.