Amicus Briefs opposing CISFs filed at SCOTUS

[Photo of NRC environmental scoping public comment meeting in Andrews, TX in Feb. 2017, re: Waste Control Specialists’ (later renamed Interim Storage Partners) CISF license application, compliments of No Nuclear Waste Aqui and SEED Coalition.]

Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025 was the deadline for opponents of so-called “Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities” (CISFs) to submit Friend of the Court Briefs with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

The following parties filed Amicus Briefs by the deadline:

1. City of Fort Worth, Texas. Ft. Worth had previously filed a similar Amicus Brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in opposition to Holtec’s CISF targeting southeastern New Mexico. Ft. Worth is the 12th largest city in the U.S., with a population of more than 950,000, and is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. It is one of the country’s major railroad hubs. A large percentage of the unprecedented number of Mobile Chornobyls bound for Interim Storage Partners’ CISF in Andrews County, TX and/or Holtec’s CISF in Eddy-Lea Counties, NM would pass through Ft. Worth en route to the dumps;

2. Beyond Nuclear;

3. Don’t Waste Michigan et al.;

4. States of New Mexico and Michigan;

5. State of Utah and Six Other States [Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia];

6. State of Idaho;

7. United States Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, and Representatives Jodey Arrington, Henry Cuellar, August Pfluger, and Ronny Jackson;

8. Pacific Legal Foundation;

9. Permian Basin Petroleum Association and New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau.

In other recent developments in these SCOTUS cases, the U.S. Solicitor General has requested “divided argument” between itself and ISP. The Solicitor General filed this request with SCOTUS on Jan. 17, 2025. Likewise, on Jan. 21, 2025, the State of Texas and Fasken have also moved for “divided argument.”

Recent History of These Cases

SCOTUS granted cert. to NRC and ISP on October 4, 2024. This launched the SCOTUS review of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’s (in New Orleans) 2023 and 2024 rulings vacating NRC’s licenses for both ISP in TX, as well as Holtec in NM, to construct and operate CISFs.

Pro-CISF Petitioners — NRC, DOJ, the U.S. Solicitor General, and ISP — filed their Briefs with SCOTUS by the Dec. 2, 2024 deadline.

Pro-CISF parties — NEI and Holtec — filed Amicus Briefs with SCOTUS by the Dec. 9, 2024 deadline.

A Joint Appendix for the cases was also filed with SCOTUS in early to mid-December, 2024.

Anti-CISF Respondents — Fasken Land and Minerals, Ltd./Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners and Operators, as well as the State of Texas — filed their Briefs with SCOTUS by the Jan. 15, 2025 deadline.

Anti-CISF parties — Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste MI et al., the City of Fort Worth, TX, and a number of states — filed their Amicus Briefs with SCOTUS by the Jan. 22, 2025 deadline.

See SCOTUS’s online docket for these consolidated cases, with links to documents, here.

SCOTUS has scheduled oral arguments on these cases for Wed., March 5, 2025, beginning at 10am ET.

You can listen to live oral arguments from the United States Supreme Court on the court’s website at supremecourt.gov. You can also listen on:

• scotusblog.com: Listen live at 10 a.m. EST 

SCOTUS will likely rule on these cases by the end of June, 2025.

Beyond Nuclear and our allies have very actively resisted — at every twist and turn — these particular CISFs since October 2016. But we have resisted the very concept of CISFs since our founding in 2007, including the CISF targeting the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah, as well as testifying numerous times against CISFs before DOE’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (2010-2012). We have also educated congressional offices on countless occasions, including testifying before congressional committees on Mobile Chornobyl transportation risks in October 2015.