Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-14-55580/USCOURTS-ca9-14-55580-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 899
Nature of Suit: Other Statutes - Administrative Procedure Act/Review or Appeal of Agency Decision
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CALIFORNIA SEA URCHIN

COMMISSION; CALIFORNIA ABALONE

ASSOCIATION; CALIFORNIA LOBSTER

AND TRAP FISHERMEN’S

ASSOCIATION; COMMERCIAL

FISHERMEN OF SANTA BARBARA,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

MICHAEL BEAN, in his official

capacity as Acting Assistant

Secretary for Fish and Wildlife &

Parks, Department of Interior;

DANIEL M. ASHE, in his official

capacity as Director of the United

States Fish and Wildlife Service;

UNITED STATES FISH & WILDLIFE

SERVICE,

Defendants-Appellees,

and

FRIENDS OF THE SEA OTTER;

HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED

STATES; DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE;

CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL

DIVERSITY; THE OTTER PROJECT;

ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER;

No. 14-55580

D.C. No.

2:13-cv-05517-

DMG-CW

OPINION

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2 CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN

LOS ANGELES WATERKEEPER,

Intervenor-Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Dolly M. Gee, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted May 6, 2016

Pasadena, California

Filed July 12, 2016

Before: Alex Kozinski, William A. Fletcher,

and Ronald M. Gould, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Gould

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CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN 3

SUMMARY*

Environmental Law

The panel reversed the district court’s dismissal on

timeliness grounds of plaintiff commercial fishing groups’

complaint alleging that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

violated its statutory authority under Public Law 99-625 by

terminating a translocation program for the southern sea otter.

The panel held that plaintiffs’ challenge, filed in 2013,

was timely because the operative agency action challenged

was the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2012 promulgation of a

rule terminating the translocation program. Specifically, the

panel held that plaintiffs may challenge the termination of the

program within six years of the decision to terminate the

program, and were not required to bring suit within six years

of the 1987 rulemaking espousing the authority to terminate

the program. On remand, the panel directed the district court

to decide if there was merit to plaintiffs’ position that the Fish

and Wildlife Service was without Congressional authority to

terminate the translocation program.

COUNSEL

Jonathan Wood (argued) and Damien M. Schiff, Pacific Legal

Foundation, Sacramento,California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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4 CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN

Rachel Heron (argued), Daniel J. Pollak, John L. Smeltzer,

and Vivian H.W. Wang, Attorneys; Sam Hirsch, Acting

Assistant Attorney General; Environment & Natural

Resources Division, United States Department of Justice,

Washington, D.C.; Lynn Cox, Office of the Solicitor, United

States Department of the Interior; for Defendants-Appellees.

OPINION

GOULD, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs, California Sea Urchin Commission and other

commercial fishing groups, appeal the district court’s

dismissal of their complaint alleging that the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service (FWS) violated its statutory authority under

Public Law 99-625 by terminating a translocation program

for the southern sea otter. The district court dismissed the

complaint, concluding that it constituted a facial challenge to

a 1987 regulation and was thus untimely. Reviewing the

dismissal de novo, Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co. v. City of Lodi,

302 F.3d 928, 939 (9th Cir. 2002), we reverse and remand for

the reasons that follow.

I

The southern sea otter, also known as the California sea

otter, historically ranged throughout the California coast, but

was hunted to near extinction for its fur in the 1700s and

1800s. The southern sea otter was listed as a threatened

species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1977. 

Although the sea otter’s population and range had increased

since federal and state bans on hunting in the early 1900s, it

was still only about 10% of its historical level at the time of

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CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN 5

listing. 52 Fed. Reg. 29,754 (Aug. 11, 1987) (“Final Rule”). 

In 1982, FWS finalized a recovery plan for the sea otter,

which determined that the most effective means of recovery

was to establish a new colony far enough away from the

present range that a large-scale oil spill could not wipe out the

entire population. Id.

In 1986, Congress authorized FWS to develop and

implement “a plan for the relocation and management of a

population of California sea otters from the existing range of

the parent population to another location.” Pub. L. No. 99-

625 § 1(b) (1986). FWS then promulgated the 1987 Final

Rule, which implemented the program and chose San Nicolas

Island as the home of the experimental population. 52 Fed.

Reg. at 29,754. The fishing industry, including the groups

that are Plaintiffs here, was opposed to an expansion of the

sea otter population. The fishing industry participated in the

rulemaking process and opposed the experimental population

because it perceived a new population of sea otters, and their

accompanying federal protections under the ESA and the

Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), as onerous. 

Another source of conflict is that sea otters prey on many

species that are harvested commercially, including sea urchin,

lobster, and abalone. Congress authorized the experimental

population on the condition that FWS include an otter

“management zone,” which would be free of otters, to protect

fishing, oil, and military interests. Pub. L. No. 99-625

§ 1(b)(4); 52 Fed. Reg. at 29,756. Congress required FWS to

use all feasible non-lethal means to capture and remove otters

from the management zone “to prevent, to the maximum

extent feasible, conflict with other fishery resources.” Pub.

L. No. 99-625 § 1(b)(4)(B). Fishermen who incidentally

harmed otters while conducting lawful activities in the

management zone were exempted from the take prohibitions

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of the ESA and the MMPA. Pub. L. No. 99-625 § 1(c)(2). 

The management zone covered the entire Southern California

coast from Point Conception to the Mexico border, except for

the experimental population on San Nicolas Island.

The Final Rule acknowledged that there was some chance

the translocation program would not succeed. To determine

whether the project should be continued or terminated, FWS

included in the Final Rule five termination criteria.1

52 Fed.

Reg. at 29,784. FWS planned to terminate the experimental

population if it found that any one of the criteria was met. Id.

From the start of the translocation program, the

experimental sea otter population was plagued by high

mortality and emigration. 53 Fed. Reg. 37,577, 37,579 (Sept.

27, 1988). In 1993, FWS stopped removing sea otters that

were found in the management zone, though the ESA and

MMPA exemptions remained in effect. FWS prepared

several environmental impact statements on the effects of

terminating the program and reinitiated ESA consultation,

culminating in a Biological Opinion concluding that

resumption of otter removal in the management zone would

1 The criteria are: (1) if after the first year, no translocated otters remain

in the translocation zone and the reasons for emigration or mortality

cannot be identified and/or remedied; (2) if within three years, fewer than

25 otters remain and the reason for emigration or mortality cannot be

identified or remedied; (3) if after two years, the experimental population

is declining at a significant rate and the translocated otters are not showing

signs of “successful reproduction”; (4) if otters are “dispersing from the

translocation zone and becoming established within the management zone

in sufficient numbers to demonstrate that containment cannot be

successfully accomplished”; and (5) if the “health and well-being of the

experimental population should become threatened to the point that the

colony’s continued survival is unlikely.” 52 Fed. Reg. at 29,784.

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CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN 7

likely jeopardize the otter’s continued existence. 77 Fed.

Reg. 75,266, 75,270 (Dec. 19, 2012).

Despite the recognized failures of the translocation

program, the management zone’s ESA and MMPA take

exemptions continued as before. In 2009, IntervenorDefendants Friends of the Sea Otter and other environmental

organizations sued FWS for unreasonable delay in

terminating the translocation program. The parties reached

a settlement that required FWS to issue a final decision on

program termination by the end of 2012. On December 19,

2012, FWS promulgated a rule terminating the program based

on application of the Final Rule’s termination criteria. 

77 Fed. Reg. at 75,266. FWS’s analysis concluded that the

translocation program met the 1987 Final Rule’s second

failure criterion: “fewer than 25 otters remain and the reasons

for emigration or mortality cannot be identified and/or

remedied.” Id. at 75,267; 52 Fed. Reg. at 29,772.

Plaintiffs filed suit in early 2013, alleging that the

program’s termination exceeded FWS’s statutory authority

under Public Law 99-625.2 Plaintiffs contend that Congress

gave FWS the authority only to implement the otter

translocation program, not to terminate it, and that Congress

did not authorize the termination criteria in the 1987 Final

Rule. Thus, Plaintiffs contend, the 2012 program termination

exceeded the agency’s statutory authority.

2 Plaintiffs separately petitioned FWS to rescind its 2012 decision. FWS

denied the petition. Three of four Plaintiffs filed a separate complaint

alleging that the denial of the petition was unlawful. That case is not

before us. See Cal. Sea Urchin Comm’n v. Bean, No. 2:14-cv-8499 (C.D.

Cal. filed Nov. 3, 2014).

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II

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) authorizes

judicial review of final agency actions. 5 U.S.C. § 704. APA

claims must be brought within six years of the agency action

that is challenged. 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a); Spannaus v. U.S.

Dep’t of Justice, 824 F.2d 52, 56 (D.C. Cir. 1987). To be a

final agency action, an agency decision must meet two

criteria. First, the action must be the “consummation” of the

agency’s decisionmaking process, not merely a tentative or

interlocutory decision. Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 178

(1997). Second, the action must be one by which “rights or

obligations have been determined” or from which “legal

consequences will flow.” Id. (quoting Port of Bos. Marine

Terminal Ass’n v. Rederiaktiebolaget Transatlantic, 400 U.S.

62, 71 (1970)); see also City of San Diego v. Whitman,

242 F.3d 1097, 1102 (9th Cir. 2001) (for an agency action to

be final, it must “impose an obligation, deny a right or fix

some legal relationship”).

Plaintiffs’ complaint claims that FWS lacks the statutory

authority to terminate the translocation program—that Public

Law 99-625 “provides no authority to [FWS] to cease such

program once it has been initiated.” FWS contends that the

complaint is really a facial challenge to the 1987 Final Rule,

which laid out the termination criteria FWS relied on in 2012. 

Such a challenge would be far outside the statute of

limitations. Plaintiffs, on the other hand, contend that the

2012 program termination was the operative final agency

action, and that the 1987 Final Rule is relevant only because

it provides FWS’s authorization for the 2012 termination. 

This would place the 2013 complaint well within the statute

of limitations.

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CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN 9

We conclude that the operative agency action challenged

is the 2012 program termination, and thus that Plaintiffs’

challenge is timely. We express no opinion on the merits of

Plaintiffs’ underlying claims. We hold only that Plaintiffs

may challenge FWS’s termination of the program within six

years of the decision to terminate the program, and were not

required to bring suit within six years of the 1987 rulemaking

espousing the authority to terminate the program. To hold

otherwise would require Plaintiffs to have filed suit nearly a

decade before FWS took the action that caused their injury.

The 1987 Final Rule was clearly a final agency action, but

so too was the 2012 program termination. Although the 1987

Final Rule laid out the criteria through which the

translocation program could be terminated at some future

date, FWS did not terminate the program until 2012, when it

“determined that the southern sea otter translocation program

has failed to fulfill its purpose . . . .” 77 Fed. Reg. at 75,266. 

Although Plaintiffs cannot now challenge the 1987 Final

Rule, they can challenge its application in the 2012 program

termination as exceeding the agency’s statutory authority. 

See Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. Salazar, 695 F.3d 893,

904 (9th Cir. 2012) (holding that while the plaintiffs were

time-barred from challenging a 1983 regulatory definition,

“they can challenge [FWS’s] alleged application of that

definition in the 2008 Chukchi Sea regulations as exceeding

the agency’s statutory authority”).

FWS contends that because Plaintiffs’ challenge is

brought against FWS’s underlying authority as asserted in the

1987 Final Rule, the challenge existed at the time the Final

Rule was promulgated and Plaintiffs unjustifiably waited

more than 25 years to sue. We disagree. Plaintiffs did not

“wait” to sue, because the issue did not become salient until

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FWS actually terminated the program, in 2012. A plaintiff

cannot be expected to anticipate all possible future challenges

to a rule and bring them within six years of the rule’s

promulgation, before a later agency action applying the

earlier rule leads to an injury. Though the translocation

program’s failure criteria were set forth in 1987, and the

program faced difficulties from its inception, the

“consummation” of the agency’s decisionmaking process was

its 2012 program termination. See Bennett, 520 U.S. at 178. 

This was the action from which “legal consequences . . .

flow” from Plaintiffs’ perspective. Id. It is this termination,

not the 1987 establishment of the failure criteria, that

Plaintiffs challenge. Though FWS characterizes Plaintiffs’

complaint as a “facial” challenge to FWS’s authority to

cancel the translocation program, that argument goes to the

merits of Plaintiffs’ underlying action. It does not make

Plaintiffs’ 2013 challenge to FWS’s 2012 agency action

untimely.

Our cases on this topic determine the timeliness of APA

challenges according to when the applicable agency action

was taken. We have held that a statute of limitations may run

against a plaintiff even if it is not injured until more than six

years after the relevant agency action became final. Shiny

Rock Mining Corp. v. United States, 906 F.2d 1362, 1363 (9th

Cir. 1990). In Shiny Rock, the Bureau of Land Management

(BLM) published a 1964 Public Lands Order withdrawing

certain federal lands from mineral extraction. Id. More than

fifteen years later, a mining company applied to the BLM for

a mineral patent, which the agency rejected in part because

the company’s claim was in the area that the Public Land

Order had withdrawn from mining. Id. The company

contended that the statute of limitations period should not

begin to run until a plaintiff is injured and acquires standing. 

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Id. at 1364–66. We disagreed, holding that the statute of

limitations period runs from when the agency action becomes

final and is published in the Federal Register. Id. at 1365. 

We reasoned that considering standing to sue a prerequisite

to the running of the limitations period would render the

limitations period meaningless by extending it indefinitely. 

Id.

FWS contends that this case is analogous to Shiny Rock. 

Just as the clock started running on the mining company’s

claim when the BLM’s land withdrawal order was published,

FWS reasons, here Plaintiffs’ claim that FWS lacks authority

to terminate the program accrued in 1987, when FWS

published the rule containing the failure criteria. We

disagree. In Shiny Rock, the government’s land withdrawal

order was a prospective decision that put all interested parties

on notice of an agency action. This case is different because

while the 1987 Final Rule put fishing groups on notice that

FWS may at some later date terminate the program, the

operative agency action did not happen until 2012, when

FWS actually terminated the program. Unlike the BLM’s

rejection of the company’s mineral patent application in

Shiny Rock, which was a straightforward application of the

land withdrawal order to a particular company, the 2012

program cancellation was a generally applicable rule,

published in the Federal Register, that reflected new agency

decisionmaking based on the program’s failure to realize its

objectives. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 75,266. Shiny Rock does not

foreclose Plaintiffs from reaching the merits of their 2013

APA challenge to FWS’s 2012 agency action.

Wind River Mining Corp. v. United States, 946 F.2d 710

(9th Cir. 1991), is more analogous to this case because it

involved the present application of an earlier rule that

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allegedly contradicted the agency’s statutory authority. In

Wind River, the BLM published a 1979 rule in the Federal

Register establishing 138 Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) in

California. Id. at 711. Between 1982 and 1983, a mining

company staked claims within one of those areas, “WSA

243.” Id. The company unsuccessfully sought to have the

BLM declare its creation of WSA 243 invalid, on the grounds

that the area was not “roadless” as required by the Federal

Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. Id. It then filed

an extraction plan in 1987, which the BLM denied, based on

the land being a designated WSA. Id. at 712. In 1989, the

companysued in federal court, challenging the BLM’s refusal

to declare its creation of WSA 243 invalid. The district court

dismissed the challenge as untimely because the rule was

promulgated ten years earlier, in 1979. Id. We reversed. 

Because the plaintiff alleged that the BLM’s 1979 rule

establishing WSA 243 violated its statutory authority, we

recognized that subsequent final agency actions applying the

1979 rule would also allegedly exceed the agency’s statutory

authority. Id. at 715. We concluded that “a substantive

challenge to an agency decision alleging lack of agency

authority may be brought within six years of the agency’s

application of that decision to the specific challenger.” Id. at

716.

FWS contends that Wind River is inapposite to this case. 

It is true that this case does not concern the validity of a

regulation as applied to a specific challenger; the 2012

program cancellation is instead a generally applicable agency

rule. But Wind River is otherwise analogous to this dispute. 

As in Wind River, Plaintiffs seek to challenge a recent agency

action applying an earlier rule. As in Wind River, Plaintiffs

contend that the earlier rule went beyond the agency’s

statutory authority, and thus that the agency lacked the

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CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN 13

statutory authority to take the recent action. Finally, it is the

recent action, not the earlier rule, that caused Plaintiffs’

injury. While an injury creating standing to sue is not a

prerequisite to the running of the limitations period, see Shiny

Rock, 906 F.2d at 1365, here Plaintiffs point to a recent and

independent agency action causing their injury. FWS may

well defend its 2012 cancellation as a straightforward

application of the 1987 Final Rule’s failure criteria, but that

application was nonetheless a final agency action, with its

own limitations period beginning in 2012.

The justification for the Wind River rule is that an agency

should not be able to sidestep a legal challenge to one of its

actions by backdating the action to when the agency first

published an applicable or controlling rule. If the operative

dispute does not arise until decades later, when the agency

applies the earlier rule, such a holding would wall off the

agency from any challenge on the merits. The statute of

limitations would cease to be a shield against stale claims,

and would instead become a sword to vanquish a challenge

like the case here, without ever considering the merits. The

claim in Wind River was not untimely, because the agency

applied its 1979 rule to the plaintiff mining company in 1987,

within six years of the company’s suit. Neither is Plaintiffs’

claim in this case, as FWS did not apply the termination

criteria from the 1987 Final Rule until 2012, when it

terminated the translocation program.

Another justification for our Wind River holding was that

“no one was likely to have discovered that the BLM’s 1979

designation of [WSA 243] was beyond the agency’s authority

until someone actually took an interest in that particular piece

of property, which only happened when [the company]staked

its mining claims.” Wind River, 946 F.2d at 715. FWS

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14 CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN

contends that this justification for the Wind River rule is

absent in this case, because Plaintiffs do not contend that no

one was likely to have discovered the 1987 Final Rule; to the

contrary, the fishing industry was an active participant in the

rulemaking process. That fisheries groups, some of whom

are Plaintiffs here, knew about the 1987 Final Rule and were

involved in its creation is immaterial. Plaintiffs are not

contending that the Final Rule evaded their scrutiny. They

are contending, correctly, that their live dispute with FWS did

not arise until 2012.

Our decision is also supported by pragmatic concerns. If

parties had to challenge the Final Rule’s termination criteria

within six years of 1987, then any such challenge predating

the program’s termination would necessarily have been

theoretical. In view of the actual termination, it is possible to

focus on issues such as injury in a concrete way.

III

Plaintiffs contend that Public Law 99-625 gave FWS the

authority to establish a sea otter translocation program, but

not the authority to cease that program once it has been

initiated. They contend that when FWS published its 2012

rule terminating the translocation program, it acted without

authority from Congress, and thus contrary to law and in

excess of its statutory authority. See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A),

(C). Our holding does not reach the merits of this claim,

because the district court dismissed it on timeliness grounds. 

We hold only that Plaintiffs’ 2013 challenge to the 2012

agency action terminating the sea otter translocation program

was timely. The district court on remand should decide if

there is merit to Plaintiffs’ position that FWS was without

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CAL. SEA URCHIN COMM’N V. BEAN 15

Congressional authority to terminate the translocation

program.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

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