Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Department of the Interior

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s determination that environmental organizations did not establish standing to challenge the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s approval of more than 4,000 Applications for Permit to Drill (APDs) for oil and gas wells in New Mexico and Wyoming. First, the D.C. Circuit found that the organizations’ members’ allegations that they lived, worked, and recreated in the areas encompassing all the approved APDs in each of the states were not supported by information regarding which APDs would cause the members’ harm. The court said the plaintiffs “must somehow establish an injury in fact traceable to every challenged well.” Second, the D.C. Circuit found that the organizations did not establish associational standing for Endangered Species Act (ESA) claims based on allegations that the permits would contribute to climate change and “intensify threats to listed habitats and species that they travel to observe and study.” The D.C. Circuit concluded that its precedent suggested “that environmental plaintiffs cannot demonstrate the required concrete and particularized harm to their interests only by asserting that a challenged government action will contribute to a particular harmful effect of global climate change.” The court further concluded that even if an injury resulting from climate change could support standing, the plaintiffs did not plausibly allege that their injury was traceable to the challenged action and redressable by a favorable judicial decision. Third, the court held that one of the organizations did not have organizational standing for its ESA claims based on allegations that the failure to conduct consultation under the ESA deprived the organization of information about the permits’ impacts on imperiled species.