Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05223/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05223-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Friends of Animals
Appellant
Sally Jewell
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 16, 2016 Decided July 15, 2016

No. 15-5223

FRIENDS OF ANIMALS,

APPELLANT

v.

SALLY JEWELL, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SECRETARY OF

INTERIOR, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:15-cv-00016)

Jennifer E. Best argued the cause for appellant. With her on

the briefs was Michael R. Harris. 

Matthew Littleton, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were John

C. Cruden, Assistant Attorney General, and Andrew C. Mergen

and Thekla Hansen-Young, Attorneys.

Before: ROGERS, SRINIVASAN and MILLETT, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 1 of 11
2

Rogers, Circuit Judge: This appeal presents a single

question: Does Friends of Animals have informational standing

under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the failure of

the Secretary of Interior to act in accordance with a deadline in

section 4 of the Endangered Species Act? Because this deadline

provision does not itself mandate the disclosure of any

information, Friends of Animals has not suffered an

informational injury and therefore does not have informational

standing. Essentially, Friends of Animals has invoked

informational standing prematurely. At this stage in the

administrative process, Friends of Animals is not entitled to any

information. Accordingly, we affirm the dismissal of its

complaint.

I.

Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act (“the Act”),

Pub. L. No. 93-205, 87 Stat. 884 (1973) (codified as amended at

16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.), to conserve endangered and

threatened species. See 16 U.S.C. § 1531(b). Section 4

empowers the Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce to

designate species endangered or threatened and directs the

Secretary of the Interior (“the Secretary”) to list in the Federal

Register all species covered by either designation. Id. § 1533(a),

(c)(1). Once a species is listed, it becomes subject to a variety

of statutory and regulatory protections. See, e.g., id. §§ 1533(d),

1536, 1538(a).

Any “interested person” may petition the Secretary to add

a species or remove it from the endangered or threatened species

lists. Id. § 1533(b)(3)(A); see also 5 U.S.C. § 553(e); 50 C.F.R.

§ 424.14(a). A petition to list or de-list triggers two mandatory

deadlines. First, “[t]o the maximum extent practicable, within

90 days after receiving the petition,” the Secretary “shall make

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 2 of 11
3

a finding as to whetherthe petition presents substantial scientific

or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action

may be warranted.” 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(A). Second, if the

Secretary makes a positive 90-day finding, then — within 12

months of having received the petition — she must make one of

three findings: that the listing action requested is (1) not

warranted, (2) warranted, or (3) warranted but temporarily

“precluded” by pending proposals to list other species. 

Id. § 1533(b)(3)(B)(i)–(iii); see generally Friends of Animals v.

Ashe, 808 F.3d 900, 902–03 (D.C. Cir. 2015). 

Whichever of the three 12-month findings the Secretary

makes, she must publish certain information in the Federal

Register. If she makes a “not warranted” finding, she must

publish that finding. 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(B)(i). If she makes

a “warranted” finding, she must publish a general notice and the

text of a proposed regulation implementing the listing decision. 

Id. § 1533(b)(3)(B)(ii). If she makes a “warranted” but

“precluded” finding, she must publish that finding, along with

“a description and evaluation of the reasons and data on which

the finding is based.” Id. § 1533(b)(3)(B)(iii). The Secretary

has delegated the section 4 listing responsibilities in part to the

Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”). See 50 C.F.R. § 402.01(b);

see also Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife,

551 U.S. 644, 651 (2007); Ashe, 808 F.3d at 902. 

The Act’s citizen-suit provision permits “any person” to

bring suit against the Secretary in federal district court alleging

that the Secretary has failed to perform a non-discretionary act

or duty required by section 4. 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g)(1)(C). The

Secretary’s duty to comply with section 4’s 12-month finding

provision — once triggered by a positive 90-day finding — is

non-discretionary and therefore falls within the citizen-suit

provision. See Ashe, 808 F.3d at 903. Before filing suit

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 3 of 11
4

pursuant to subparagraph (1)(C) of the citizen-suit provision,

however, a plaintiff generally must give the Secretary 60 days’

prior notice. 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g)(2)(C).

According to the complaint, Friends of Animals is a nonprofit organization that seeks to protect animals from cruelty and

exploitation. On September 27, 2013, it submitted two listing

petitions asking the Secretary to list the spider tortoise and the

flat-tailed tortoise as either threatened or endangered. More than

eight months later, on June 9, 2014, the FWS issued positive 90-

day findings in response to both listing petitions. See 90-Day

Finding on Petitions To List Two Tortoises as Endangered or

Threatened and and [sic] a Sloth as Endangered, 79 Fed. Reg.

32,900, 32,902. Twelve months after it had filed its petitions,

Friends of Animals found itself still waiting for the 12-month

findings and served the Secretary with notice of its intent to sue. 

In December 2014, the FWS sent Friends of Animals a letter

stating that it planned to issue 12-month findings for both listing

petitions in fiscal year 2017 (October 1, 2016 – September 30,

2017). 

Subsequently, Friends of Animals filed suit in the district

court, alleging that the Secretary had violated section 4 of the

Act by not timely issuing 12-month findings in response to its

listing petitions. It principally sought declaratory and injunctive

relief, in particular a declaratory judgment that the Secretary had

violated the Act by not issuing 12-month findings in response to

the listing petitions and not listing the two tortoise species as

endangered or threatened, and an order directing the Secretary

to issue findings and rulemakings on each species within 60

days. The district court granted the Secretary’s motion to

dismiss the complaint for lack of Article IIIstanding, ruling that

Friends of Animals had failed to satisfy the elements of any of

the three theories of standing it advanced: informational

standing, organizational standing, and associational standing. 

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 4 of 11
5

Friends of Animals v. Jewell, 115 F. Supp. 3d 107, 110–19

(D.D.C. 2015); FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(1). Friends of Animals

appeals, challenging only the district court’s ruling on

informational standing. Our review is de novo. See Friends of

Animals v. Jewell, No. 15-5070, 2016 WL 3125204, at *5 (D.C.

Cir. June 3, 2016). 

II.

Under any theory, “the irreducible constitutional minimum

of standing contains three elements”: (1) the plaintiff must have

suffered an “injury in fact” that is “concrete and particularized”

and “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical”;

(2) there must exist “a causal connection between the injury and

the conduct complained of”; and (3) it must be “likely, as

opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed

by a favorable decision.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504

U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

The burden of establishing these elements falls on the party

invoking federal jurisdiction, and at the pleading stage, a

plaintiff must allege facts demonstrating each element. Id. at

561. As the Supreme Court recently indicated, the existence and

scope of an injury for informational standing purposes is defined

by Congress: a plaintiff seeking to demonstrate that it has

informational standing generally“need not allege anyadditional

harm beyond the one Congress has identified.” Spokeo, Inc. v.

Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1549 (2016) (emphasis in original)

(citing FEC v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 20–25 (1998), and Pub.

Citizen v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 491 U.S. 440, 449 (1989)). That

type of injury is the sole basis on which Friends of Animals

contends it has standing.

A plaintiff suffers sufficiently concrete and particularized

informational injury where the plaintiff alleges that: (1) it has

been deprived of information that, on its interpretation, a statute

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 5 of 11
6

requires the government or a third party to disclose to it, and

(2) it suffers, by being denied access to that information, the

type of harm Congress sought to prevent byrequiring disclosure. 

See Akins, 524 U.S. at 21–22. The scope of the second part of

the inquiry may depend on the nature of the statutory disclosure

provision at issue. In some instances, a plaintiff suffers the type

of harm Congress sought to remedy when it simply “s[eeks] and

[is] denied specific agency records.” Pub. Citizen, 491 U.S. at

449–50. In others, a plaintiff may need to allege that nondisclosure has caused it to suffer the kind of harm from which

Congress, in mandating disclosure, sought to protect individuals

or organizations like it. Compare Akins, 524 U.S. at 21–23, and

Shays v. FEC, 528 F.3d 914, 923 (D.C. Cir. 2008), with Nader

v. FEC, 725 F.3d 226, 230 (D.C. Cir. 2013).

Here, Friends of Animals’s contention that it has standing

fails at the first part of the inquiry, the sine qua non of

informational injury: It is seeking to enforce a statutory

deadline provision that by its terms does not require the public

disclosure of information. The disclosure requirement Friends

of Animals points to as the source of its informational injury

does not impose any obligations on the Secretary until a later

time in the listing process. To the contrary, Friends of Animals

insists, section 4 of the Act gives it a right to two categories of

information now, and it suffers informational injury because the

Secretary’s delay in issuing a 12-month finding deprives it of

this information. The first category is the information the

Secretary must publish in the Federal Register after making a

12-month finding. See 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(B)(i)–(iii). The

second is the information that the Secretary must publish in the

Federal Register when listing an endangered or threatened

species. See id. § 1533(c)(1). But as the prayer for relief in the

complaint demonstrates, Friends of Animals does not yet have

a right to either category of information.

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 6 of 11
7

Section 4(b)(3)(B) of the Act — the provision at issue here

— contains two functional components, a deadline requirement

and a disclosure requirement. The deadline requirement

mandates that the Secretary make one of three types of findings

within 12 months of receiving a listing petition: “(i) The

petitioned action is not warranted . . .”; “(ii) The petitioned

action is warranted . . .”; or “(iii) The petitioned action is

warranted, but [precluded] . . . .” 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(B). 

The disclosure requirement sets forth what information the

Secretary must publish after making a given finding. The

structure of section 4(b)(3)(B) makes clear that these

requirements arise sequentially: “Within 12 months after

receiving a petition . . . , the Secretary shall make one of the

following findings: [type of finding], in which case the Secretary

shall promptly [publish the relevant information in the Federal

Register].” See id. By adopting this sequential procedural

structure, Congress placed the Secretary under no obligation to

publish any information in the Federal Register until after

making a 12-month finding. The same is true of the requirement

that the Secretary publish certain information in the Federal

Register when listing a species, see id. § 1533(c)(1), which

mandates that the Secretary disclose information only after she

— or the Secretary of Commerce — has made a decision that a

species warrants listing.

The structure of section 4(b)(3)(B) reflects the distinct

purposes served by the deadline requirement and the disclosure

requirement. Congress, in the Endangered Species Act

Amendments of 1982, Pub. L. No. 97-304, § 2(a)(2), 96 Stat.

1411, 1412, added the 12-month decision-making deadline to

section 4 in order to “force [agency] action on listing and delisting proposals” — action that up to that point often had

proceeded at a molasses-like pace — and to hasten “the footdragging efforts of a delinquent agency.” H.R.REP.NO. 97-835,

at 20–22 (1982) (Conf. Rep.); see also S.REP. NO. 97-418, at 4,

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 7 of 11
8

10–14 (1982). The disclosure requirement, on the other hand,

functions to explain the Secretary’s finding to various audiences

and to set the stage for the next steps in the listing process. For

example, the information the Secretary must publish after

making a “not warranted” or “warranted but precluded” finding

serves — among other purposes — to facilitate judicial review

of the finding. See 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(C)(ii); see also H.R.

REP. NO. 97-835, at 21–22; S. REP. NO. 97-418, at 13–15. The

information the Secretary must publish after making a

“warranted” finding is necessary to initiate the notice-andcomment rulemaking process that will determine whether the

species at issue is ultimately listed. See 16 U.S.C.

§ 1533(b)(3)(B)(ii); see also id. § 1533(b)(4)–(6), (b)(8).

Friends of Animals’s complaint seeks to have the court

order compliance with section 4(b)(3)(B)’s deadline

requirement, not its disclosure requirement. This is, as the

Friends of Animals president characterizes it, a “deadline suit[].” 

Decl. of Priscilla Feral ¶ 12 (Apr. 29, 2015). The complaint’s

only cause of action alleges that “[t]he Secretary failed to make

a finding indicating whetherthe petitioned action was warranted

within twelve months after receiving the petition[s] to list” the

spider tortoise and the flat-tailed tortoise. Compl. ¶¶ 36–38. 

Friends of Animals’s complaint, in other words, demonstrates

precisely why it lacks informational injury: before the Secretary

makes a 12-month finding, section 4(b)(3)(B) does not mandate

the disclosure of any information whatsoever. 

Friends of Animals attempts to overcome this hurdle by

conflating the purposes of section 4(b)(3)(B)’s deadline and

disclosure requirements. Together, in Friends of Animals’s

view, those two requirements confer on it “the right to timely

information.” Pet’r’s Reply Br. 5 n.2 (emphasis omitted). Yet

nothing in the Act or its legislative history indicates that the

deadline requirement Friends of Animals seeks to enforce

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 8 of 11
9

should be read to incorporate the informational purpose of

section 4(b)(3)(B)’s disclosure requirement. The deadline

requirement was meant to spur a then-laggard agency to

accelerate the pace of the listing process, which “ha[d] come to

a virtual standstill” and was, in turn, undermining the speciesprotective purpose of the Act. S. REP. NO. 97-418, at 4. It was

not meant, as Friends of Animals urges, to speed up the pace at

which the Secretary disclosed information to the public. 

Our other informational standing precedents in the

Endangered Species Act context are to the same effect. In

American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v.

Feld Entertainment, Inc., 659 F.3d 13, 22–24 (D.C. Cir. 2011),

the court held that a violation of section 9 of the Act could not

give rise to an informational injury because the relevant

provisions of section 9 did not require the release of any

information but merely prohibited defined categories of

behavior harmful to certain species protected under the Act. Id.

at 22–24; see also 16 U.S.C. §§ 1532(19), 1538. The plaintiff’s

theory of informational standing was that if the defendant’s

conduct were found to violate section 9, the defendant might

seek a permit, under section 10 of the Act, that would allow it to

persist in its conduct, and section 10(c) would then require the

Secretary to make public certain information as part of the

permitting process. Feld Entm’t, 659 F.3d at 22; see also 16

U.S.C. § 1539(a), (c). The court held that, whatever

informational rights might exist under section 10, the plaintiff

sought to enforce the prohibitions in section 9, which did not

mandate the disclosure of any information. Feld Entm’t, 659

F.3d at 23–24. A plaintiff can demonstrate informational injury,

on the other hand, where it seeks to enforce section 10(c)’s

disclosure requirements. See Jewell, 2016 WL 3125204, at

*5–7. Here, Friends of Animals seeks to enforce section

4(b)(3)(B)’s deadline requirement, not its disclosure

requirements. But section 4(b)(3)(B)’s deadline requirement,

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 9 of 11
10

like the prohibitions in section 9 of the Act and unlike the

disclosure requirements in section 10(c), does not mandate the

release of information.

The same distinction undercuts Friends of Animals’s

reliance on other informational standing cases. In those cases,

the plaintiffs or petitioners had informational standing because

they sought to enforce a statutory disclosure requirement. The

plaintiffs in Akins, 524 U.S. at 21–22, 26, and Public Citizen,

491 U.S. at 445–47, 449–50, sued over whether certain

organizations were subject to disclosure requirements in the

Federal Election Campaign Act and the Federal Advisory

Committee Act, respectively. In Ethyl Corp. v. EPA, 306 F.3d

1144 (D.C. Cir. 2002), the petitioner sought to enforce a

provision of the Clean Air Act that, it maintained, required the

EPA to take actions that it had been handling behind closed

doors through public notice-and-comment rulemaking. Id. at

1146–48. Likewise unavailing is Friends of Animals’s reliance

on American Canoe Association, Inc. v. City of Louisa Water

and Sewer Commission, 389 F.3d 536, 544–47 (6th Cir. 2004). 

Setting aside the Sixth Circuit’s apparent conflation of

informational and organizational standing, compare id. at

544–46, with id. at 546–47, the plaintiffs there sued to force a

municipal utility to abide by a provision of the Clean Water Act

that they contended imposed certain disclosure obligations. Id.

at 539–40. Finally, in Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455

U.S. 363, 373–75 (1982), and Zivotofsky ex. rel. Ari Z. v.

Secretary of State, 444 F.3d 614, 615–19 (D.C. Cir. 2006), the

plaintiffs sought to compel compliancewith statutoryprovisions

that guaranteed a right to receive information in a particular

form. By contrast, Friends of Animals seeks to enforce a

deadline requirement that does not obligate the Secretary to

disclose information.

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 10 of 11
11

Obviously our holding is narrow. It cannot be read broadly

to mean that a plaintiff suing to enforce the requirements of

section 4 never has informational standing. For example,

suppose the FWS were to determine that the listing petitions at

issue are warranted but precluded and yet declined to publish in

the Federal Register “a description and evaluation of the . . . data

on which the finding is based,” as required by statute. 16 U.S.C.

§ 1533(b)(3)(B)(iii). At that point, Friends of Animals maywell

have informational standing to sue to compel the publication of

the relevant data — that is, to compel compliance with section

4(b)(3)(B)’s disclosure requirement. See Jewell, 2016 WL

3125204, at *5–7; cf. Feld Entm’t, 659 F.3d at 23–24. 

Furthermore, none of the foregoing means that Article III leaves

a plaintiff in Friends of Animals’s position without judicial

recourse. The Secretary’s alleged failure to make a 12-month

finding within the statutorily mandated timeframe may have

caused Friends of Animals some other cognizable injury in fact. 

This case, however, does not present, nor do we decide, whether

a claim of associational or organizational standingmight support

a challenge to the Secretary’s failure to make the required 12-

month finding. We hold only that as to its “deadline suit”

Friends of Animals has failed to establish that it has

informational standing, the sole theory advanced before this

court.

Accordingly, we affirm the dismissal of the complaint.

.

USCA Case #15-5223 Document #1624903 Filed: 07/15/2016 Page 11 of 11