Ouachita Watch League v. Jacobs
| Decision Date | 05 September 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-14462.,No. 05-14461.,05-14461.,05-14462. |
| Citation | 463 F.3d 1163 |
| Parties | OUACHITA WATCH LEAGUE, Jerry Williams, Forest Conservation Council, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Robert JACOBS, in his official capacity as Regional Forester of the Southern Region of the U.S. Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, in his official capacity as Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ann M. Veneman, in her official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Defendants-Appellees. The Chattooga Conservancy, Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Florida Biodiversity Project, Forest Conservation Council, Georgia Forestwatch, Ouachita Watch League, Sierra Club, Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, Wild Alabama, Wild South, Wilderness Society, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Robert Jacobs, as Regional Forester of the Southern Region of the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Eric E. Huber, Sierra Club, Boulder, CO, Jonathan Lee Schwartz, Jon L. Schwartz, P.C., Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Lisa E. Jones, Michael T. Gray, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Appellate Sect./Environ. & Nat. Res., Washington, DC, Robert David Powell, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants-Appellees.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Before ANDERSON, BARKETT and CUDAHY,* Circuit Judges.
The basic substantive issue in this consolidated appeal is whether a coalition of environmental groups (collectively, Ouachita) is correct that the U.S. Forest Service's (Forest Service's) changes to certain forest plans1 in the Southern Region2 of the United States failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). The district court never reached that issue, concluding instead that the majority of Ouachita's claims were not ripe for review. That conclusion was wrong, since it was based primarily on a construction of the ripeness doctrine that is generally standard but does not apply in NEPA suits. Because we find no merit in the Forest Service's claims that Ouachita lacks standing and that certain claims are now moot (both of which it raised for the first time on appeal), we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the case for further proceedings.
The central dispute between the parties in this case centers on environmental impact statements and records of decision (collectively, EISs) for forests in three subregions of the Southern Region (, the Appalachian Mountains subregion, the Coastal Plain/Piedmont subregion and the Ozark/Ouachita Mountains subregion). These EISs, which the Forest Service completed following our decision in Sierra Club v. Martin, 168 F.3d 1 (11th Cir.1999), relate to revisions and amendments to the Forest Service's procedures for collecting information on proposed, endangered, threatened and sensitive species, commonly called PETS. Ouachita argues that these EISs fail to consider and are inconsistent with three earlier vegetative management plans and EISs (collectively, VMEISs) for the Southern Region, which the Forest Service completed in 1989.
The 1989 VMEISs cover more than 12.6 million acres of national forest land spanning 13 states. They specifically consider five distinct methods of vegetation management,3 along with (pursuant to 40 C.F.R. § 1502.14 (2006)) measures to mitigate any potential damages that those methods might cause.
The VMEISs require that when the Forest Service considers using one of the five vegetation management methods, it perform a biological evaluation of the effects on PETS as part of its consideration. Specifically, the VMEISs provide that:
[w]hen adequate population inventory information is unavailable, it must be collected when the site has a high potential for occupancy by a threatened, endangered, proposed, or sensitive species.
(R., Chattooga Conservancy, 69:Vol. IV, tab 1 at II-41.) The Forest Service interpreted this language to require population inventories only if the site has a high potential for occupancy by PETS. Martin, 168 F.3d at 4. Information about the habitats, it reasoned, satisfied the monitoring requirement. Id. The Forest Service later amended the forest plans for each forest at issue in this case to include this PETS-monitoring language.
In 1996, several plaintiffs involved in the present appeal sued the Forest Service, arguing that its interpretation of the PETS-monitoring language was incorrect. On appeal, we concluded that the plain language of the VMEISs' provision required the Forest Service to perform population inventories in project areas where such inventories were not "available." Id.
Not long after Martin, the Forest Service amended the forest plans of three national forests to adopt revised PETS-monitoring provisions. This new language provided that, in certain circumstances, the Forest Service need not perform inventories but could instead assume the presence of PETS if suitable habitats were present.4 The Forest Service has since replaced these amendments and adopted new language.5
In response to the amendments (and before the adoption of the new language), several environmental groups sued the Forest Service on July 26, 2001. Chattooga Conservancy v. Jacobs, 373 F.Supp.2d 1353 (N.D.Ga.2005). The basic theory of Chattooga Conservancy was that these amendments were a thinly veiled attempt to avoid the requirements of Martin. Specifically, the complaint alleged that the forest plan amendments and revisions violated the governing regional VMEISs. In addition, the complaint alleged that the Forest Service violated NEPA in several ways, including by failure to prepare supplements to the regional VMEISs before making the plan amendments and revisions.
In response to the complaint, the Forest Service gave notice of its intention to prepare supplements to the VMEISs and to amend the Forest Service Manual to include a new requirement of a time to perform population inventories for PETS species. Both the forest plan amendments and the manual revision eliminated the requirement that the Forest Service collect population inventory data on PETS species.
On May 7, 2003, many of the plaintiffs involved in Chattooga Conservancy filed another suit challenging a number of site-specific projects on several national forests, most of which were severed and transferred. Forest Conservation Council v. Jacobs, 374 F.Supp.2d 1187 (N.D.Ga. 2005). The portion of the complaint in that action relevant to the present appeal challenged the Forest Service's NEPA compliance with respect to Amendment 31 to the Ouachita National Forest Plan,6 which specifically revised that plan so that the Forest Service could rely upon "habitat information" instead of "population inventories." The Forest Service now claims that Ouachita's challenge to Amendment 31 is moot. Chattooga Conservancy and Forest Conservation Council () were consolidated for the purposes of this appeal.
We review a district court's entry of summary judgment, along with threshold justiciability determinations, de novo. Sierra Club v. Tenn. Valley Auth., 430 F.3d 1337, 1344 (11th Cir.2005); Wilderness Soc'y v. Alcock, 83 F.3d 386, 389 (11th Cir.1996). We review an agency's decisions pursuant to NEPA under the arbitrary and capricious standard of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) (2006); City of Oxford v. FAA, 428 F.3d 1346, 1351 (11th Cir. 2005).
The Forest Service has challenged Ouachita's claims on ripeness, mootness and standing grounds—the latter two of which it raised only on appeal. We begin with the standing consideration, since we have an obligation to assure ourselves of a litigant's standing under Article III, which provides a fundamental limitation on a federal court's authority to exercise jurisdiction. DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 1854, 1860-61, 164 L.Ed.2d 589 (2006).
Resolving the Forest Service's claim that Ouachita lacks standing requires analysis under both the constitutional and the nonconstitutional or prudential standing doctrines. Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 128, 125 S.Ct. 564, 160 L.Ed.2d 519 (2004). Since this case involves a coalition of environmental groups, the rules for associational standing also apply. That is, "[a]n association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at stake are germane to the organization's purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit." Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 181, 120 S.Ct. 693, 145 L.Ed.2d 610 (2000); Tenn. Valley Auth., 430 F.3d at 1344. So long as one party has standing, other parties may remain in the suit without a standing injury. Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 434-36, 118 S.Ct. 2091, 141 L.Ed.2d 393 (1998).
The requirements for constitutional standing are familiar: Ouachita must show that it has suffered an injury in fact that was caused by the Forest Service's actions and that can be redressed by a favorable judicial decision. Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 180-81, 120 S.Ct. 693 (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)). In environmental suits, the injury-in-fact inquiry tends to be more searching than the causation or redressability considerations. Sierra Club v. Johnson, 436 F.3d 1269, 1277-78 (11th Cir. 2006); see also Citizens for Better Forestry v. U.S. Dep't of...
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