Chesapeake Climate Action Network v. Export-Import Bank of the United States

The federal district court for the District of Columbia ruled that environmental groups did not have associational or organizational standing. The court ruled that the environmental groups asserting associational standing had failed to establish the redressability component of standing because they had not established a likelihood that a change in Ex-Im Bank’s authorization of the loan guarantee  would affect Xcoal’s export of coal. Noting that, in a case like this one, the agency’s action is “only one piece of the redressability puzzle,” the court found that a declaration submitted by Xcoal’s vice president of finance supported the defendants’ assertion that Xcoal had obtained enough alternative sources of credit so that rescission of the loan guarantee would not impede coal exports; the court further found that the environmental groups had not brought forward any facts to rebut this testimony. The court also held that two other environmental groups—Pacific Environment (PE) and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) —failed to establish organizational standing. The two groups had asserted that Ex-Im Bank’s actions caused injuries to their missions, activities, and resources. The court found that neither group had established injury-in-fact. The court found that PE had not established either a conflict between approval of the loan guarantee and PE’s mission, an impediment to the PE’s activities, or a drain on PE’s resources. With respect to CIEL, the court was not persuaded by arguments that CIEL’s policy work had been undermined because CIEL was forced to direct time and resources towards monitoring Ex-Im Bank’s policies, or that CIEL’s public education efforts had been injured by its inability to provide input during the course of Ex-Im Bank’s decision-making process.

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Environmental groups challenged the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank of the United States’ approval of a $90 million loan guarantee, which they alleged would facilitate a commercial loan to Xcoal Energy & Resources, LLC (Xcoal) and enable Xcoal to broker $1 billion in sales of coal for export from Appalachian coal mines. Petitioners alleged that the Ex-Im Bank failed to consider environmental and health impacts prior to approving the loan in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. In November 2013 the case was transferred to the federal district court for the District of Columbia.

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