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Page Number: 16

12 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION v. BROWN 

Opinion of the Court 

this  case,  however,  the  causal  uncertainty  is  not  merely
over whether observing certain procedures would have led 
to  a  different  substantive  outcome.  Instead,  the  uncer-
tainty concerns whether the substantive decisions the De-
partment has made regarding the Plan under the HEROES
Act have a causal relationship with other substantive deci-
sions respondents want the Department to make under the
HEA.  There is no precedent for tolerating this sort of causal 
uncertainty. 

Our  other  procedural-standing  cases  demonstrate  the 
point.  In  the  example  posited  in  Lujan,  proceeding  with
building  the  dam  as  planned  and  simultaneously  sparing 
the adjacent landowner from the negative effects of the dam 
are mutually exclusive options.  See ibid.  While it might be 
uncertain  whether  undertaking  an  environmental  impact
statement  would  prevent  the  dam  from  being  built,  it  is
clear that building the dam would directly injure the land-
owner. 

Similarly, in a case like Summers, it might be uncertain
whether public comment would alter any particular land-
management  decision  the  Forest  Service  makes.    There 
would be no uncertainty, however, that a plaintiff with con-
crete plans to observe nature in a particular area “would be
harmed  if  the  [land-management  project]  went  forward
without  incorporation  of  the  ideas  he  would  have  sug-
gested” in his comments.  555 U. S., at 494.3 

Accordingly, Brown and Taylor need not allege that ob-
serving  negotiated  rulemaking  and  notice  and  comment 
would “ ‘force’ ” the Department to reach substantive results 
more  favorable  to  them  than  those  embodied  in  the  Plan. 

—————— 

3 Although no plaintiff in Summers had standing because none had al-
leged specific plans to observe nature in one of the areas at issue in the
case, see 555 U. S., at 500, the point remains that, in an equivalent case
featuring  those  specific  plans,  environmental  damage  to  such  a  plain-
tiff ’s  esthetic  interests  could  fairly  be  traced  to  the  Service’s  land- 
management choices.