Diné Citizens Against Ruining the Environment v. Navajo Transitional Energy Co.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision affirming the dismissal of lawsuit brought by environmental groups in 2016 to challenge federal authorizations of the expansion of coal mining and the extension of a coal plant’s operations on tribal lands in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona. The Ninth Circuit had agreed with the district court that the Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC)—a corporation wholly owned by the Navajo Nation and the owner of the coal mine—was a required party that could not be joined due to tribal sovereign immunity. The Ninth Circuit further concluded that the district court had not abused its discretion in determining that the lawsuit could not proceed without NTEC. The environmental groups had asked the Supreme Court to review the question of whether the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “require[] dismissal of an Administrative Procedure Act action challenging a federal agency’s compliance with statutory requirements governing federal agency decisions, for failure to join a non-federal entity that would benefit from the challenged agency action and cannot be joined without consent.”