Page 235 - California Stormwater Workshop Handouts

Ecological Rights Foundation v. Pacific Lumber Co., 230 F.3d 1141 (2000)
51 ERC 1545, 31 Envtl. L. Rep. 20,246, 00 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8692...
L.Ed.2d 435 (1981). Because the statutory and
constitutional standing issues therefore merge, the only
standing issue before us, which we determine de novo, is
whether the plaintiffs have standing under Article III to
proceed to the merits of their lawsuit. Alaska Wildlife
Alliance v. Jensen, 108 F.3d 1065, 1068 (9th Cir.1997).
We conclude that Mateel and ERF have Article III
standing based on Hinderyckx’s and Evenson’s use,
respectively, of Yager Creek, and therefore do not address
the plaintiffs’ alternative standing theory based on direct
injuries to the plaintiff groups’ organizational interests.5
5 Pacific Lumber’s argument that 33 U.S.C. § 1365 does
not allow for organizations to sue in their capacity as
representatives of their members’ interests is
necessarily foreclosed by Laidlaw, itself a Clean Water
Act citizen suit brought by several environmental
organizations on behalf of their members.
1. Organizational Standing in Environmental Cases
[3] [4] An organization has standing to bring suit on behalf
of its members when: “(a) its members would otherwise
have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it
seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s
purposes; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief
requested requires the participation of individual members
in the lawsuit.” Hunt v. Washington State Apple
Advertising Com’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53
L.Ed.2d 383 (1977); see also International Union, United
Auto., Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of
America v. Brock, 477 U.S. 274, 290, 106 S.Ct. 2523, 91
L.Ed.2d 228 (1986).6 Individual members would have
standing in their own right under Article III if “they have
suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and
particularized and (b) actual and imminent, not
conjectural or hypothetical, ... the injury is fairly traceable
to the challenged action of the defendant; and ... it is
likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury
will be redressed by a favorable decision.” Laidlaw, 120
S.Ct. at 704 (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504
U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)).
The dispute in this case hinges principally on whether any
individual members of ERF and Mateel have alleged an
“injury in fact,” and therefore would have standing to sue
in their own right.
6 The first two Hunt criteria satisfy Article III’s “case or
controversy” requirement by ensuring that the
organization’s claim will be litigated vigorously, while specified distance from the area covered by the lawsuit
the third is merely prudential, promoting only
administrative convenience and efficiency. See United
© 2015 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 751 v.
Brown Group, Inc., 517 U.S. 544, 555–57, 116 S.Ct.
1529, 134 L.Ed.2d 758 (1996).
[5] The “injury in fact” requirement in environmental cases
is satisfied if an individual adequately shows that she has
an aesthetic or recreational interest in a particular place,
or animal, or plant species and that that interest is
impaired by a defendant’s conduct. See, e.g., Laidlaw,
120 S.Ct. at 705; Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at
562–63, 112 S.Ct. 2130; Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S.
727, 734–35, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972);
Oregon Natural Desert Ass’n v. Dombeck, 172 F.3d 1092,
1094 (9th Cir.1998). The district court in this case so
recognized, but concluded nonetheless that none of the
members of ERF and Mateel who submitted affidavits in
support of the organizations’ standing alleged contacts
with Yager Creek sufficient to state an injury in fact to
their recreational and aesthetic interests, explaining its
decision as follows:
Despite the low threshold required
for satisfying the injury in fact
requirement, the court does not find
that plaintiffs’ *1148 submissions
regarding harm to their members
and their members’ connection to
Yager Creek to be adequate....
[E]ven in view of the statements of
plaintiffs’ members construed in a
light most favorable to plaintiffs,
the court finds that the members’
spatial and temporal contacts with
Yager Creek are too sporadic or
attenuated to satisfy the injury in
fact prong of the standing analysis.
Importantly, none of the plaintiffs’
affiants state that they live in the
vicinity of Yager Creek or
regularly use Yager Creek for
recreational or aesthetic purposes.
61 F.Supp.2d at 1057.
The district court’s standing ruling, it thus appears, turned
on the supposition that a plaintiff can only establish
standing in an environmental case on the basis of
aesthetic or recreational interests if she lives some
and repeats her use of the area at some prescribed
interval. The “injury in fact” requirement in
environmental cases is not, however, reducible to
inflexible, judicially mandated time or distance
7