Opinion ID: 175346
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: Mandatory Language

Text: In the Omnibus Act, Congress directs that the Corps shall build the bridge as described in the June 2008 LRR/EA report. This command denies the Corps any discretion in the matter. This lack of discretion is a third reason why the federal courts have no subject matter jurisdiction over the Tribe's suits. Claims brought against an agency under NEPA, FACA, or the ESA proceed only when the agency has choices in a matterhere, choices between alternatives that vary in their environmental friendliness. Here, no discretion means no jurisdiction. Procedural statutes like NEPA do not apply when an agency has no discretion to act or not to act on a given matter. Dep't of Transp. v. Public Citizen, 541 U.S. 752, 770, 124 S.Ct. 2204, 2217, 159 L.Ed.2d 60 (2004) (holding that NEPA does not apply to an agency that lacks statutory authority to act in the relevant manner); Nat'l Ass'n of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife, 551 U.S. 644, 669, 127 S.Ct. 2518, 2536, 168 L.Ed.2d 467 (2007) (same holding under the ESA); Florida Key Deer v. Paulison, 522 F.3d 1133, 1144 (11th Cir.2008) (discussing Public Citizen ) ([A]n agency cannot be held accountable for the effects of actions it has no discretion not to take.). Moreover, the tension between the Corps's lack of discretion under the shall of the Omnibus Act, and the environmental statutes' presumption of agency discretion, is an additional conflict between the statutes that we conclude supports a finding of repeal here. The Omnibus Act of course refers to the LRR/EA, which in turn contains oblique references to NEPA and ESA. [20] These stray mentions are descriptive rather than prescriptive, and they are not to be mistaken for a grant of Article III jurisdiction. [21] Quite the opposite obtains. When a legislature writes a set of administrative findings into law, the administrative findings become legislative ones, and thus are no longer reviewable through the ordinary avenues of administrative law. As one court put it, in this posture the record of decision became a legislative action and not an administrative action. In effect, there is no longer an administrative action for us to review. Mallory, 119 F.Supp.2d at 481. Mallory was a Pennsylvania district court decision that concluded that the notwithstanding clause in a transportation bill incorporating the administrative record of decision effected an implied repeal of NEPA and the Clean Water Act for a federal interstate highway project. Mallory went on to state: That is, by making the administrative decision a legislative decision, Congress has barred plaintiffs from seeking review of the administrative decision. Moreover, the action removes from the administrative agencies any discretion they may have had: they now are required by statute to act in a predetermined manner. Id. at 482. We believe the analysis in Mallory applies here. The lack of discretion in Congress's command to build the bridge precludes the applicability of statutes like NEPA or the ESA, which presume agency discretion as a starting point. And, the adoption of the administrative finding as a legislative finding bars judicial review of agency action. The NEPA court, clearly aware of the high legal standard for an implied repeal of NEPA and FACA, concluded that the Omnibus Act effected an explicit exemption... from the reach of such statutes. D.E. 128 at 7. It did this even though the Omnibus Act does not explicitly mention any statute it is repealing. The Tribe correctly points out that the Omnibus Act language does not meet the generally understood test for an explicit repeal. For the reasons we have already stated, we prefer to describe this repeal as one resulting from a general repealing clause. [22] Moreover, for the reasons stated by the district court in the NEPA case, we find that the Tribe's constitutional challenges to the Omnibus Act are without merit. [23] We therefore affirm the district courts' dismissals for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Therefore, we affirm the judgments of the district courts. AFFIRMED.