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Nature of Suit Code: 893
Nature of Suit: Environmental Matters
Cause of Action: 

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Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 5, 2002 Decided February 4, 2003

No. 01-7166

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY CIRCUS AND

FELD ENTERTAINMENT, INC.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(00cv01641)

Katherine Anne Meyer argued the cause for appellants.

With her on the briefs were Eric R. Glitzenstein and Jonathan R. Lovvorn.

 Bills of costs must be filed within 14 days after entry of judgment.

The court looks with disfavor upon motions to file bills of costs out

of time.

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Harris Weinstein argued the cause for appellees. With

him on the brief were Eugene D. Gulland, Elliott Schulder,

and Kevin C. Newsom.

Before: RANDOLPH and ROGERS, Circuit Judges, and

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: Asian elephants perform at the

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The American

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Animal

Welfare Institute, the Fund for Animals, and Thomas Rider

sued Ringling Bros. and its owner, Feld Entertainment, Inc.,

claiming that Asian elephants are an endangered species and

that the circus mistreated its elephants in violation of the

Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq. The only

question is whether, as the district court ruled in dismissing

their complaint, plaintiffs lack standing under Article III of

the Constitution.

The strongest case for standing is presented by Thomas

Rider. The relevant allegations in the complaint relating to

him are as follows. Ringling Bros. holds circus performances

in the United States and other countries. It sometimes

stages events in which its Asian elephants parade along public

streets. Rider worked for Ringling Bros. from June 1997 to

November 1999, tending the elephant barns and working as a

‘‘handler.’’ As a result of his work with the elephants he

formed a ‘‘strong, personal attachment to these animals.’’

Employees of Ringling Bros. beat the elephants with sharp

bull hooks, kept the elephants in chains for long periods of

time, and forcibly removed baby elephants from their mothers at an earlier age than they could normally be weaned in

the wild. These actions have negative impacts on the elephants’ behavior ‘‘wherever they perform or are exhibited.’’

Rider has seen the elephants show stressful ‘‘stereotypic’’

behavior as a result. Department of Agriculture inspectors

saw lesions and rope burns on the elephants. Rider left his

job at Ringling Bros. because of the mistreatment of the

elephants. He would like to work with the elephants again

and would attempt to do so if the elephants were relocated.

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Rider would also like to visit the elephants, but is unwilling to

do so because he would suffer ‘‘aesthetic and emotional

injury’’ from seeing the animals unless they are placed in a

different setting or are no longer mistreated.

The complaint was brought under the citizen-suit provision

of the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g), which

allows any person to commence a civil suit to enjoin violations

of the Act or its regulations. Id. § 1540(g)(1)(A). Plaintiffs

provided written notice to the Secretary of the Interior and to

Ringling Bros. sixty days before filing suit. Id.

§ 1540(g)(2)(A). They sought a declaratory judgment that

Ringling Bros. violated the Act and the regulations thereunder, an injunction against future violations, forfeiture of the

elephants, and other relief.

The citizen-suit provision in the Endangered Species Act,

by specifying that ‘‘any person’’ may be a plaintiff, eliminates

any prudential standing requirement. See Bennett v. Spear,

520 U.S. 154, 163–65 (1997). Rider still must satisfy Article

III by showing that he has suffered an injury in fact, fairly

traceable to the defendant’s action, and capable of judicial

redress. See id. at 167.

Rider failed to make such a showing, the district court

ruled, because his exposure to the mistreatment of the elephants in the past did not cause him any present injury or

threaten to cause any injury in the near future. Rider

claimed that he wanted to work with the elephants again.

But whether he could find such employment if Ringling Bros.

were ordered to forfeit the elephants was, in the court’s view,

speculative. Rider’s remaining arguments for standing – his

general emotional upset, and his ‘‘continuing injury’’ from

having quit his job – were insufficient for reasons unnecessary to recount. (The district court also held that the remaining individual and organizational plaintiffs lacked standing.)

We believe Rider has alleged enough to show injury in

fact – that is, ‘‘an invasion of a judicially cognizable interest

which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or

imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’’ Bennett, 520 U.S.

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at 167; Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560

(1992). ‘‘At the pleading stage, general factual allegations of

injury resulting from the defendant’s conduct may suffice’’

because courts assume plaintiffs can back up their general

claims with specifics at trial. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. Rider’s allegations of injury fit within decisions of this court and

the Supreme Court recognizing that harm to one’s aesthetic

interests in viewing animals may be a sufficient injury in fact.

See id. at 562–63; Japan Whaling Ass’n v. American Cetacean Soc’y, 478 U.S. 221, 230 (1986); Sierra Club v. Morton,

405 U.S. 727, 734–35 (1972); Animal Legal Def. Fund v.

Glickman, 154 F.3d 426, 432 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en banc).

In Glickman, one of the plaintiffs had an ‘‘aesthetic’’ interest in observing animals under humane conditions. Glickman, 154 F.3d at 431. He regularly visited a particular zoo

and saw conditions to which he objected, such as chimpanzees

housed in isolation (causing social deprivation), adult bears

placed in proximity to squirrel monkeys (frightening the

latter), and other conditions he believed to be inhumane. Id.

at 429–30. Given his desire and plan to visit the zoo in the

future, we held that he had alleged an injury in fact. Id. at

431–32.

While the complaint here says the elephants are still being

mistreated, continuing harm to the animals is not our main

focus. It is Rider who must be suffering injury now or in the

immediate future. What we have written about Rider’s experience at Ringling Bros. cannot suffice. In actions for injunctive relief, harm in the past – as the district court correctly

held – is not enough to establish a present controversy, or in

terms of standing, an injury in fact. The question thus is

whether the complaint contains enough to show some present

or imminent injury to Rider. We believe it does.

In Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs.

(TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 181–82 (2000), the injury to the

organizational plaintiffs stemmed from the defendant’s discharging pollutants into a river. Some of plaintiffs’ members

had used the river and its environs for recreation in the past.

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Because of the pollution they had not gone back, but would if

the discharges ceased. The Court found injury in fact: the

discharges affected the members’ ‘‘recreational, aesthetic, and

economic interests’’ and the members’ conditional statements

about visiting the river again could not be dismissed as mere

speculation. Id. at 184.

To generalize from Glickman and Laidlaw, an injury in

fact can be found when a defendant adversely affects a

plaintiff’s enjoyment of flora or fauna, which the plaintiff

wishes to enjoy again upon the cessation of the defendant’s

actions. Rider says he became attached to the elephants

when he worked with them and would like to ‘‘visit’’ them

again ‘‘so that he can continue his personal relationship with

them, and enjoy observing them.’’ Exactly what sort of

‘‘visit’’ he has in mind is not spelled out. We can be sure that

the prospect of his working in the elephant barns again is nil.

But we believe a fair construction of his allegation encompasses Rider’s attending the circus as any member of the public

would, by purchasing a ticket and viewing the show from the

audience. From this vantage point he might observe either

direct physical manifestations of the alleged mistreatment of

the elephants, such as lesions, or detect negative effects on

the animals’ behavior, which he claims he would recognize

based on his experience working at Ringling Bros. This

takes his claim out of the category of a generalized interest in

ensuring the enforcement of the law, which would be insufficient to establish Article III standing. See Common Cause v.

Fed. Election Comm’n, 108 F.3d 413, 418 (D.C. Cir. 1997).

And it distinguishes him from other members of the public,

including those who attend the circus.

We recognize that Rider’s allegations differ from those in

Glickman in one respect. Like the Glickman plaintiff who

had regularly gone to a zoo, Rider claims to have witnessed

inhumane treatment of animals while he was working for the

circus. But unlike the Glickman plaintiff, if Rider returned

to the circus as a member of the audience there is nothing to

indicate that he would be in a position to witness the mistreatment again. Even so, we cannot see why this should

matter as far as his standing is concerned. The plaintiffs in

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Laidlaw may not have seen the pollutants being discharged

into the river; it was sufficient that they detected the effects

of the pollution on the ecology. Here, the complaint alleges

mistreatment and Rider says he is able to detect the effects,

even if he does not directly observe the mistreatment. Given

the posture of the case, we must assume the truth of the

claims.

We think Humane Society v. Babbitt, 46 F.3d 93 (D.C. Cir.

1995), in which we found the plaintiffs lacked standing, is

different from this case. In Babbitt, which reached us at the

summary judgment stage, we expressed doubt whether a

plaintiff had alleged an injury in fact based on her lost

opportunity to study Asian elephants generally and her inability to observe a particular Asian elephant when the zoo

removed it. Babbitt, 46 F.3d at 97–100. (We ultimately held

that the causation and redressability requirements were not

satisfied. Id. at 100.) Rider’s alleged injuries are different.

Unlike the plaintiff in Babbitt, Rider alleged a strong personal attachment to the elephants. Id. at 97. In Babbitt, we left

open the question whether ‘‘emotional attachment to a particular animal TTT could form the predicate of a claim of injury.’’

Id. at 98. We answer that question in the affirmative today.

A person may derive great pleasure from visiting a certain

river; the pleasure may be described as an emotional attachment stemming from the river’s pristine beauty. Laidlaw,

528 U.S. at 182–83. We can see no principled distinction

between the injury that person suffers when discharges begin

polluting the river and the injury Rider allegedly suffers from

the mistreatment of the elephants to which he became emotionally attached during his tenure at Ringling Bros. – both

are part of the aesthetic injury. Contrast Valley Forge

Christian Coll. v. Americans United for Separation of

Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 485–86 (1982). Babbitt

also noted that removing one of the Asian elephants did not

appear to threaten the plaintiff’s opportunity to observe the

species because three others were still at the zoo. Babbitt, 46

F.3d at 97. Rider’s personal relationship with the elephants

eliminates the concern, expressed in Babbitt, that a plaintiff

who could continue to observe several animals of a particular

species might not be injured if one of the animals were

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removed. Rider has also stated a desire to visit the elephants, making his injury present or imminent; the plaintiff

in Babbitt did not assert an intent to return to the zoo to

observe elephants and thus had not alleged an imminent

injury. Id. These factors, coupled with the lesser standard

required to show standing on a motion to dismiss, distinguish

this case from Babbitt.

For these reasons, Rider has made a sufficient allegation of

injury in fact to satisfy the first element of the standing

analysis.

The second element in Article III standing is a causal

connection between the injury and the defendant’s conduct –

‘‘the injury must be fairly traceable to the challenged action

of the defendant.’’ Bennett, 520 U.S. at 167. It is unquestioned that Ringling Bros.’s alleged actions – inhumane treatment of the elephants – are the source of the aesthetic

injuries that Rider alleges.

The third element for standing is redressability. A plaintiff must show that it is ‘‘likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.’’ Bennett, 520 U.S. at 167. Rider seeks two forms of

relief – an injunction that would stop Ringling Bros. from

continuing to mistreat the elephants in violation of the Endangered Species Act and its regulations and an order directing Ringling Bros. to forfeit possession of the elephants. If

Rider wins the case, we must assume – because the case is at

the pleading stage – that his injury will be resolved. Although the complaint does not come right out and say that an

end to mistreatment will bring about a change in the elephants’ behavior, this is a fair inference. It may also be

inferred that if Rider wins, the elephants will no longer

exhibit the physical effects of mistreatment. Rider then will

be able to attend the circus without any aesthetic injury. It

follows that Rider has alleged enough to show that his

injuries will likely be redressed if he is successful on the

merits.

Based upon his desire to visit the elephants (which we must

assume might include attending a performance of the circus),

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his experience with the elephants, his alleged ability to recognize the effects of mistreatment, and what an injunction

would accomplish, Rider’s allegations are sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss for lack of standing. We therefore

do not decide whether the other plaintiffs have standing

because each of them is seeking relief identical to what Rider

seeks. See, e.g., Watt v. Energy Action Educ. Found., 454

U.S. 151, 160 (1981); Glickman, 154 F.3d at 445.

The judgment of the district court dismissing the complaint

for lack of standing is therefore reversed.

So ordered.

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