Sierra Club v. DEQ, 2016 UT 49 (Oct. 26, 2016)

The Executive Director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality dismissed a request for agency action.  Rather than addressing alleged deficiencies in the Executive Director’s final order in their opening brief, the petitioners instead challenged underlying steps in the agency process.  The court struck the portions of the petitioners’ reply brief in which they, for the first time, addressed the Executive Director’s final order.  The petitioners’ failure to challenge the appropriate decision in their principal brief led the court to dismiss the appeal on the basis that the petitioners had not met their burden of persuasion.