Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
National Parks Conservation Association sued the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, and federal officials over an April 2025 decision allowing Dateline Resources Ltd. and Colosseum Rare Metals, Inc., collectively CRM, to conduct new mining operations at Colosseum Mine within Mojave National Preserve. The complaint alleges violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, Mining in the Parks Act, California Desert Protection Act, and National Environmental Policy Act. It also challenges the agencies' positions that a 1985 plan of operations remains effective and that renewed mining does not require a validity determination. The court permitted CRM to intervene as defendants on July 15, 2026, subject to limitations.
On August 10, 2026, the court granted NPCA a preliminary injunction. It set aside the April 2025 decision pending final merits review, barred mining absent compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and required CRM to halt operations safely, demobilize equipment and drill rigs, and secure the site. The court required status reports but no security from NPCA. The federal defendants and CRM appealed that order to the Ninth Circuit on September 22, then separately sought stays pending appeal. After briefing and an October 26 hearing, Judge Christina A. Snyder addressed both stay motions and CRM's request for an injunction bond.
The Court’s Holding
The court denied both stay motions under the four-factor framework in Nken v. Holder, emphasizing likelihood of success and irreparable injury as the most critical considerations. Although a notice of appeal generally transfers jurisdiction over appealed matters, Rule 62(d) permits limited action to preserve the status quo; it does not authorize a fresh merits adjudication. The court found that CRM and the federal defendants largely repeated arguments rejected in the preliminary-injunction order concerning Section 508's savings clause and the meaning of valid existing rights. Their stay papers therefore supplied no new arguments or facts warranting a different assessment of appellate success.
The asserted harms also did not justify a stay. CRM cited continuing payroll and operating expenses, possible losses of personnel, equipment, water supply, reputation, market standing, and shareholder value, while the federal defendants invoked rare earth elements and national security. The court concluded that much of this showing depended on speculation about discovering commercially viable deposits, financing their extraction, and processing them nearby. That speculation did not establish irreparable injury as the more probable or likely outcome during the appeal, and the harm showing was insufficient under the sliding-scale approach to offset the weak merits showing. The court therefore did not need to decide the remaining injury-to-others and public-interest factors, although it noted the injunction's environmental purpose.
The court separately declined CRM's request, first made expressly at the hearing, to impose a bond if the stay were denied. It left open whether Rule 62(d) gave it jurisdiction to alter the bond requirement while the injunction appeal was pending, and likewise did not resolve the issue to the extent the request sought an indicative ruling under Rule 62.1. Assuming it could act, the court would deny bond because defendants had not requested security during the preliminary-injunction briefing, offered no meaningfully new facts, and had previously raised substantially similar harm arguments. It also reiterated its discretion to dispense with security where a bond would effectively deny access to judicial review, particularly in public-interest litigation.
Key Takeaways
- The August 10, 2026 preliminary injunction remains in effect while the federal defendants' and CRM's appeals proceed.
- Repeating statutory arguments already rejected at the preliminary-injunction stage did not establish a strong likelihood of success on appeal.
- Financial and national-security concerns grounded in speculative rare-earth discoveries, financing, and processing did not establish likely irreparable injury.
- The court declined to impose an injunction bond without deciding whether it retained jurisdiction to modify security during the appeal.
- The ruling concerns interim relief and does not finally adjudicate NPCA's underlying statutory and Administrative Procedure Act claims.
Why It Matters
The decision keeps Colosseum Mine operations halted under the existing injunction rather than allowing them to resume during appellate review. It illustrates the demanding showing required to stay a preliminary injunction: a movant cannot rely principally on arguments already rejected, and uncertain commercial or strategic consequences may not satisfy the irreparable-harm requirement.
The bond discussion also preserves an unresolved procedural issue. Rather than announcing a general rule about a district court's power to modify injunction security after an appeal, the court assumed that power for argument and exercised its discretion against imposing bond on this record.