Alaska Oil & Gas Association v. Ross

Alaska Oil and Gas Association (AOGA) and American Petroleum Institute (API) filed a petition for a writ of certiorari seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding the listing of the bearded seal as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The petitioners identified the question presented as whether a species could be listed as threatened when the government determined that the species “is not presently endangered” but “will lose its habitat due to climate change by the end of the century.” AOGA and API argued that the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the ESA allowing such a listing was incompatible with standards established by the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit and contrary to the statute’s plain language. The petitioners said certiorari should be granted to address the “palpable consequences for both public and private entities” that the Ninth Circuit’s “lax standard” would have and that the bearded seal listing presented “the perfect vehicle to set the Ninth Circuit’s erroneous standard straight” because the National Marine Fisheries Service had “conceded that it has no data to make a concrete inference about how the bearded seal will react to climate change and proceeded to list as threatened a highly abundant species that has shown no population decline despite observed sea ice declines.”