Utah Ass'n of Counties v. Bush
455 F. 3d 1094, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 18547, 36 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20146 (2006)
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Rule of Law:
To establish standing to sue in federal court, a plaintiff must demonstrate an injury-in-fact that exists at the time the complaint is filed; an injury that occurs after the lawsuit has commenced cannot retroactively establish jurisdiction.
Facts:
- On September 18, 1996, President Clinton, citing the Antiquities Act, issued a proclamation establishing the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on federal land in southern Utah.
- Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) is a non-profit, public interest corporation.
- Don Wood, a member of MSLF, operated a business named Southwest Stone which mined alabaster from three claims located on the land that became the Monument.
- In 1998, the Bureau of Land Management voided Southwest Stone’s three mining claims because Wood had failed to comply with annual filing requirements.
- Because the land had been designated a national monument two years earlier, federal law prevented Wood from refiling his voided claims.
- The inability to refile the claims, which were the source of sixty to seventy percent of his sales, put Southwest Stone out of business in 1999.
Procedural Posture:
- The Utah Association of Counties (UAC) and another entity sued the U.S. government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah in June 1997, challenging the creation of the Monument.
- Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), the appellant, filed a similar complaint in the same court in November 1997.
- The district court consolidated the actions.
- The defendants filed a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment, challenging the plaintiffs' standing and the merits of their claims.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on the merits, expressly declining to rule on MSLF's standing because it found that UAC had standing.
- MSLF, as the sole remaining plaintiff to do so, appealed the district court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
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Issue:
Does an organization have associational standing to challenge a government action when the injury-in-fact alleged by its member occurred after the organization filed its complaint?
Opinions:
Majority - Ebel
No. An organization does not have associational standing if its member's alleged injury occurred after the complaint was filed. The court reasoned that Article III standing must be determined as of the time the action is brought. MSLF filed its complaint in November 1997, but the specific injury it relies on—the inability of its member, Don Wood, to refile his mining claims—did not occur until 1998 when the claims were first voided. Because Wood had not suffered an actual or imminent injury at the moment the complaint was filed, he lacked individual standing. Consequently, MSLF cannot establish the first essential prong of associational standing, which requires that at least one of its members would have standing to sue in their own right.
Analysis:
This decision reinforces the strict temporal requirement for Article III standing, emphasizing that jurisdiction is determined at the outset of litigation. It clarifies that a plaintiff cannot rely on an injury that materializes after the complaint has been filed to satisfy the 'injury-in-fact' requirement. The case serves as a crucial procedural lesson for public interest groups and other organizations bringing suits on behalf of their members: the underlying injury must be actual or imminent at the precise moment the lawsuit begins, not a speculative future harm or one that arises during the course of the litigation.
