Environmental advocacy groups filed an ethics complaint yesterday against a judge who struck down a nationwide land conservation rule last month. The groups say the judge, Clarence A. Brimmer of Federal District Court in Wyoming, had $400,000 to $1.1 million invested in the oil and gas industries, which stand to benefit from his ruling.

The judge's 2001 financial disclosure forms show that he held stock and royalty interests in 15 oil and gas companies, which account for about half the assets disclosed. The forms, which put assets into ranges of values, showed that the judge held $50,000 to $500,000 in stock in each of BP, Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco. He also received royalties from Merit Energy, Quintana Petroleum and Marathon Oil. While the numbers are not current, given the fluctuation in the stock market, he had the holdings at the time he began to preside over the case.

"A judge simply cannot rule in a case where he has a financial interest," said Douglas T. Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, which filed the complaint along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "For a judge to do so in this important a case will severely undermine public confidence in the judicial branch."

The judge issued a statement yesterday saying: "My financial holdings include certain gas and oil companies. None was a party to Wyoming v. U.S. Department of Agriculture. I also own some mineral interests, but am not aware of any that are located within a national forest. During the more than two years this matter has been pending in my court there have been thousands of pages of documents filed and numerous hearings conducted. The parties in the case have never raised any issue about the propriety of my involvement."
Mr. Kendall said, "The parties did not seek Judge Brimmer's recusal because they had no idea of his stock holdings; judicial disclosure forms are very hard to obtain."

Last month, Judge Brimmer struck down a rule that prohibited road building in areas that had neither been developed nor designated wilderness, commonly referred to as a "roadless rule." The rule, which was passed in the waning days of the Clinton administration, affects about 30 percent of the nation's forest land.

Judge Brimmer called such rules a "thinly veiled attempt to designate `wilderness areas.' " He also wrote that the rules, which took two years to develop and pass, were a "rush to give President Clinton lasting notoriety in the annals of environmentalism." The oil and gas industries, which had lobbied against the rules, said after the decision that it would open up billions of dollars worth of gas and oil in the West.

The roadless rule has been batted back and forth in the federal courts over the last two years. In 2001, an Idaho court issued a ban against the rule, which was later overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California. Judge Brimmer's decision is at odds with that ruling, and environmental advocacy groups have appealed it to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.