Summers v. Earth Island Institute

Supreme Court of the United States
(2009)

ELI5:

Rule of Law:

To establish Article III standing to challenge a government regulation, a plaintiff must demonstrate a concrete, particularized, and imminent injury-in-fact stemming from a specific application of that regulation. Deprivation of a procedural right alone is insufficient without a showing that the procedural violation will cause a separate, concrete harm to the plaintiff's interests.

Facts:

The U.S. Forest Service enacted regulations exempting certain projects, including salvage-timber sales on parcels of 250 acres or less, from its standard public notice, comment, and appeal process.
Following a fire in the Sequoia National Forest, the Forest Service approved the Burnt Ridge Project, a salvage sale of timber on a 238-acre plot.
Citing its exemption for projects under 250 acres, the Forest Service did not provide a public notice, comment period, or appeal process for the Burnt Ridge Project.
Respondents, a group of environmental organizations (Earth Island), had members who used the national forests for recreational, aesthetic, and scientific purposes.
One member, Ara Marderosian, submitted an affidavit stating he had repeatedly visited the Burnt Ridge site, had imminent plans to return, and his interests would be harmed by the project.
Another member, Jim Bensman, submitted an affidavit stating he had visited many national forests, planned to visit several unnamed forests in the future, and had a vague desire to return to the Allegheny National Forest where other projects might occur.

Procedural Posture:

Earth Island Institute and other groups sued the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, challenging regulations exempting certain projects from public comment and appeal.
The District Court granted a preliminary injunction against the Burnt Ridge timber sale, a specific project challenged in the suit.
Subsequently, the parties settled their dispute regarding the Burnt Ridge Project.
The District Court then ruled on the merits of the broader challenge to the regulations, declaring them unlawful and issuing a nationwide injunction against their enforcement.
The Government appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision to invalidate the regulations and upheld the nationwide injunction.
The Government (Petitioners) successfully sought a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Issue:

Do environmental organizations have Article III standing to challenge Forest Service regulations in the abstract, after the specific dispute that prompted the lawsuit has been settled and they have not shown a concrete, imminent injury to their members from a specific future application of those regulations?

Opinions:

Majority - Justice Scalia

No. The environmental organizations lack standing because once the Burnt Ridge Project dispute was settled, they failed to demonstrate that any of their members would suffer a concrete and imminent injury from a specific future application of the challenged regulations. To establish standing, a plaintiff must show an injury-in-fact that is actual and imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. The affidavit from Jim Bensman, with its 'some day' intentions to visit unspecified national forests, is insufficient to meet this standard. The Court rejected the argument that a procedural injury—the denial of the right to comment—is enough on its own; such an injury only confers standing if it is connected to a plaintiff's concrete interest that is being imminently threatened. The dissent's proposal for standing based on a 'statistical probability' of harm is a novel theory that would make a mockery of precedent requiring specific allegations of harm to at least one identified member.

Dissenting - Justice Breyer

Yes. The organizations have standing because there is a 'realistic threat' that the Forest Service's regulations will harm their members' interests in the near future. The Forest Service admits it will apply the challenged exemptions to thousands of projects, and the plaintiff organizations have hundreds of thousands of members who regularly use the national forests. Given these facts, it is a near certainty that some members' concrete recreational and aesthetic interests will be harmed by projects approved without the legally required procedures. The majority's demand for specificity regarding the exact time and place of future harm is overly rigid and inconsistent with precedent. The Court should have also considered the late-filed affidavits, which did identify specific, pending projects, as procedural rules should permit such supplementation when standing is challenged.

Concurring - Justice Kennedy

No. The organizations lack standing because the deprivation of a procedural right, by itself, is insufficient to create an Article III injury. For standing to exist, the procedural injury must impair a separate, concrete interest of the plaintiff. In this case, Congress did not, in the governing statute, identify or confer a separate interest that would allow a party to sue based only on the procedural violation.

Analysis:

This decision significantly heightened the injury-in-fact requirement for plaintiffs challenging procedural regulations, particularly in environmental law. It curtails the ability of organizations to bring broad, 'facial' challenges against an agency's rules and instead forces them to wait for a specific, harmful project to be approved under those rules before suing. This ruling makes it more difficult for public interest groups to challenge the legality of a regulatory program as a whole, requiring them instead to litigate on a case-by-case basis. The decision reinforces a view of standing that limits the judicial role to redressing specific, individual harms rather than overseeing the general administration of laws.

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