The Guardian reports that on July 15 the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Navy is using sonar in ways that could harm whales and dolphins. That reversed a lower court decision upholding the 2012 decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow the Navy to use low-frequency sonar for training, testing, and routine operations. The story claims whales, seals, dolphins, and walruses could be hurt by sonar, or the underwater radio waves could disrupt their feeding and mating. The Natural Resources Defense Council led a lawsuit filed in San Francisco in 2012, arguing the Navy's sonar practices violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The appellate court agreed, saying the rules failed to meet a section of the protection act requiring peacetime oceanic programs to have, “the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammals.” The court said the fisheries service, “did not give adequate protection to areas of the world’s oceans flagged by its own experts as biologically important,” according to a summary accompanying the court’s decision. "The result is that a meaningful proportion of the world’s marine mammal habitat is under-protected,” the decision said.