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12 

WEYERHAEUSER CO. v. UNITED STATES FISH AND 
WILDLIFE SERV.
 
Opinion of the Court 

discretion  by  law,”  §701(a)(2).  The  Service  contends,  and 
the  lower  courts  agreed,  that  Section  4(b)(2)  of  the  ESA 
commits  to  the  Secretary’s  discretion  decisions  not  to 
exclude an area from critical habitat. 

This Court has noted the “tension” between the prohibi-
tion  of  judicial  review  for  actions  “committed  to  agency
discretion” and the command in §706(2)(A) that courts set 
aside  any  agency  action  that  is  “arbitrary,  capricious,  an
abuse  of  discretion,  or  otherwise  not  in  accordance  with 
law.”  Heckler  v.  Chaney,  470  U. S.  821,  829  (1985).    A 
court  could  never  determine  that  an  agency  abused  its
discretion  if  all  matters  committed  to  agency  discretion
were  unreviewable.  To  give  effect  to  §706(2)(A)  and  to
honor the presumption of review, we have read the excep-
tion  in  §701(a)(2)  quite  narrowly,  restricting  it  to  “those 
rare circumstances where the relevant statute is drawn so 
that  a  court  would  have  no  meaningful  standard  against 
which  to  judge  the  agency’s  exercise  of  discretion.”    Lin-
coln  v.  Vigil,  508  U. S.  182,  191  (1993).    The  Service  con-
tends  that  Section  4(b)(2)  of  the  ESA  is  one  of  those  rare
statutory provisions.

There  is,  at  the  outset,  reason  to  be  skeptical  of  the 
Service’s position.  The few cases in which we have applied 
the  §701(a)(2)  exception  involved  agency  decisions  that 
courts  have  traditionally  regarded  as  unreviewable,  such
as the allocation of funds from a lump-sum appropriation, 
Lincoln, 508 U. S., at 191, or a decision not to reconsider a 
final  action,  ICC  v.  Locomotive  Engineers,  482  U. S.  270, 
282  (1987).  By  contrast,  this  case  involves  the  sort  of 
routine  dispute  that  federal  courts  regularly  review:  An
agency  issues  an  order  affecting  the  rights  of  a  private 
party,  and  the  private  party  objects  that  the  agency  did 
not properly justify its determination under a standard set 
forth in the statute. 

Section 4(b)(2) states that the Secretary