Wilderness Soc. v. Alcock, 94-9369

• Decision Date: 22 May 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-9369,94-9369
• Citation: 83 F.3d 386
• Parties: 26 Envtl. L. Rep. 21,401 WILDERNESS SOCIETY, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. John E. ALCOCK, as Regional Forester of the Southern Region of the U.S. Forest Service, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 386

83 F.3d 386

26 Envtl. L. Rep. 21,401

WILDERNESS SOCIETY, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. John E. ALCOCK, as Regional Forester of the Southern Region

of the U.S. Forest Service, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 94-9369.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 22, 1996.

David W. Carr, Jr., Deborah Murray Wassenaar, Charlottesville, Virginia, Gregory R. Crochet, Sarah E. Day, Kutak Rock, Atlanta, GA, for appellants.

Steven P. Quarles, Thomas R. Lundquist, Crowell & Moring, Washington, DC, Robert Klarquist, David C. Shilton, Appellate Section, Environment & Natural Resources Division, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, CARNES, Circuit Judge, and FAY, Senior Circuit Judge.

TJOFLAT, Chief Judge:

On May 1, 1992, several environmental groups filed a complaint in the district court against the Secretary of Agriculture and officials of the United States Forest Service, ¹ seeking review of the 1986 Final Land and Resource Management Plan (the "Plan") for the Cherokee National Forest. These groups alleged that the Plan violates the National Forest Management Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1600 et seq. (1994) ("NFMA"), and the regulations promulgated thereunder, see 36 C.F.R. part 219 (1995). On cross motions for summary judgment, the district court found that the environmental groups lacked standing to bring a challenge to the Plan, and, further, that they did not present a ripe controversy. The court therefore granted summary judgment in favor of appellees. We affirm.

I.

Section 1604(a) of the NFMA directs the Secretary of Agriculture to "develop, maintain, and, as appropriate, revise land and resource management plans ["LRMPs"] for units of the National Forest System." 16 U.S.C. § 1604(a). ² Each LRMP is to "guide all natural resource management activities and establish management standards and guidelines for the National Forest System. [LRMPs] determine resource management practices, levels of resource production and management, and the availability and suitability of lands for resource management." 36 C.F.R. § 219.1(b). In developing a LRMP, the Secretary must consider: compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4370d (1994) ("NEPA"), ³ see 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(1); the diversity of the plant and animal species in the forest, see 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(3)(B); the suitability of lands within the forest for resource management, see 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(2)(A); the special circumstances of the forest (e.g., the soil quality or available water resources) that might affect the methods used to harvest renewable resources and the amount of renewable resources that can be harvested, see 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(3)(C)-(F); and the "economic and environmental aspects of various systems of renewable resource management, including the ... protection of forest resources, to provide for outdoor recreation (including wilderness), range, timber, watershed, wildlife, and fish," see 16 U.S.C. § 1604(g)(3)(A).

In January of 1986, after several years of preparation, a proposed LRMP for the Cherokee National Forest was circulated for public comment. The Forest Service received comments on the proposal and made changes in response to those comments. The Plan was adopted by the regional forester in April 1986.

Appellants exhausted their administrative appeals, ⁴ and now seek judicial review of the Plan as a final agency action within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"), 5 U.S.C. § 702 (1994). ⁵ The complaint the appellants presented to the district court alleges that several of the decisions made in the Plan violate the NFMA and its regulations as follows: (1) the Plan designates too much land in the Forest as suitable for timber production; (2) the Plan fails to take into account the possibility that the costs incurred by the Forest Service will exceed the revenues the Service receives from the timber companies; (3) the Plan sets an "arbitrarily high" timber harvest level for the fifth decade of the Plan; (4) the Plan fails to follow the directives of the Secretary of Agriculture's "San Juan" decision; ⁶ (5) the Plan makes "arbitrary and capricious" assumptions about future timber harvest levels and future timber prices; (6) the Plan fails to provide for animal and plant species diversity as required by the NFMA; (7) in formulating the Plan, the Service failed to conduct species inventories as required by the NFMA and (8) the Plan fails to protect the Forest's visual resources as required by the NFMA. ⁷

Appellants seek a declaratory judgment that the Plan and the final environmental impact statement that accompanied the Plan violate the NFMA in the manner specified above. Assuming that the Plan and the impact statement are invalid, they ask that the district court remand the Plan to the Forest Service so that the Service can comply with the NFMA and its regulations.

After the parties joined issue, both sides moved for summary judgment. Appellees' motion replicated the assertion contained in its answer that the environmental groups lack standing to bring the claims at issue, and, moreover, that such claims are not ripe for judicial resolution. Appellees' motion alleged alternatively that the decisions made in the Plan comply with the NFMA and its regulations.

The district court noted the split of authority in the courts of appeals on whether claims such as the ones appellants present are justiciable; that is, whether such claims are ripe for judicial review, and, if so, whether any person has standing to bring them. The Seventh and the Ninth Circuits have held the justiciability requirements to be satisfied in cases similar to the one here. See Sierra Club v. Marita, 46 F.3d 606 (7th Cir.1995); Idaho Conservation League v. Mumma, 956 F.2d 1508 (9th Cir.1992). The Eighth Circuit, however, has found that environmental-group plaintiffs lacked standing to bring a challenge similar to the one in this case. See Sierra Club v. Robertson, 28 F.3d 753 (8th Cir.1994). That court did not address the question whether the challenge presented was ripe for judicial review.

Finding the reasoning of the Eighth Circuit in Robertson persuasive, the district court held that the injury alleged by appellants was not imminent. Thus, appellants could not "have suffered an 'injury in fact'--an invasion of a legally-protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized ... and (b) 'actual or imminent, not "conjectural" or "hypothetical." ' " Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (citations omitted). Without such an injury, the district court held, appellants did not have standing to pursue their claims.

Because the appellants' injury was not imminent, the court also held that their claims were not ripe for judicial review. Further, the court found that dismissal of the action would cause little or no hardship to appellants. Determining that the appellants did not have standing to bring their claims, and that their claims were not ripe, the district court granted the appellees' motion for summary judgment.

II.

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same legal standards that bound the district court. See Reserve, Ltd. v. Town of Longboat Key, 17 F.3d 1374, 1377 (11th Cir.1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 729, 130 L.Ed.2d 633 (1995). In making this determination, we view all evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Sammons v. Taylor, 967 F.2d 1533, 1538 (11th Cir.1992). Summary judgment is appropriate in cases in which there is no genuine issue of material fact. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c).

In this case, the district court examined the appellants' claimed injuries through the lens of the standing doctrine as well as through the lens of the ripeness doctrine. Few courts draw meaningful distinctions between the two doctrines; hence, this aspect of justiciability is one of the most confused areas of the law. Because we find the framework of the ripeness doctrine more useful when evaluating injuries that have not yet occurred, such as those claimed by appellants here, we affirm the district court on that basis.

The confusion in the law of standing and ripeness is hardly surprising. Both doctrines focus initially on the injury to the person bringing the action. The Supreme Court has stated that the "injury in fact" prong of standing requires an injury that is both "concrete and particularized" and "actual or imminent." Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. at 2136. Similarly, for the controversy to be ripe, the complained-of injury must be immediate or imminently threatened. There is an important distinction between the two doctrines, however. When determining standing, a court asks whether these persons are the proper parties to bring the suit, thus focusing on the qualitative sufficiency of the injury and whether the complainant has personally suffered the harm. See Erwin Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction § 2.4.1 (1989). When determining ripeness, a court asks whether this is the correct time for the complainant to bring the action. See id. In the instant case, the timing of the suit, rather than the propriety of appellants as plaintiffs, causes justiciability problems.

The ripeness doctrine "prevent[s] the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies" as well as "protect[s] the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties." Abbott Lab. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 148-49, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 1515, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967). A case is not " 'ripe' for judicial review under the APA until the scope of the controversy has been...