Whitewater Draw Natural Resource Conservation District v. Mayorkas

The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims that the federal government failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in connection with certain immigration programs and policies, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The certiorari petition—which raised the questions of whether the Department of Homeland Security’s NEPA procedures constituted reviewable final agency action and whether the Ninth Circuit improperly denied standing to the petitioners based on an erroneous standard—asserted that “[i]mmigrants and their children almost universally are responsible for significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than they would have been if they never emigrated from their home countries,” and that the Biden administration’s “heightened focus on greatly augmenting the population through the expansion of the pathways of immigration to the U.S.” was “at cross purposes” with the administration’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

Parties filed a petition for writ of certiorari after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their claims that the federal government failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act in connection with certain immigration programs and policies, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The petitioners asserted, among other things, that “[i]mmigrants and their children almost universally are responsible for significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than they would have been if they never emigrated from their home countries,” and that the Biden administration’s “heightened focus on greatly augmenting the population through the expansion of the pathways of immigration to the U.S.” was “at crosspurposes with” the administration’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. The certiorari petition raised the question of whether the Department of Homeland Security’s NEPA procedures constituted reviewable final agency action. The petition also presented the question of whether the Ninth Circuit improperly denied standing to the petitioners based on an erroneous standard.