Opinion ID: 2824567
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Nevada-Specific Claims

Text: Claims Three and Four allege that APHIS violated NEPA by preparing an inadequate environmental assessment for Nevada and consequently failing to prepare a Nevada-specific EIS. In support, WildEarth argues that APHIS’s Nevada analysis was deficient because, among other things, it failed to analyze the environmental impacts of trapping, aerial hunting, and avicide use—all practices that Molde contends negatively impact his aesthetic and recreational enjoyment of affected areas in Nevada. The district court dismissed these claims for lack of 4 APHIS alternately asks us to affirm the district court’s dismissal of Claims One and Two under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. The district court has yet to address this issue, and we decline to reach it in the first instance. See Am. President Lines, Ltd. v. Int’l Longshore & Warehouse Union, Alaska Longshore Div., Unit 60, 721 F.3d 1147, 1157 (9th Cir. 2013) (“It is the general rule . . . that a federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed upon below.”). 16 WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA redressability. Specifically, the district court held that the Mayer Letter, which asserted that Nevada would perform predator damage management independently if APHIS were to withdraw from Nevada, demonstrated that enjoining APHIS would not redress WildEarth’s injury. For the same reasons discussed above, WildEarth meets the injury-in-fact and causation requirements for standing to challenge APHIS’s predator damage management activities in Nevada based on Molde’s injuries, as well as the other requirements for associational standing. The only question in dispute is whether Molde’s injury is redressable. We hold that it is. APHIS argues that, if WildEarth prevailed on Claims Three and Four, APHIS would have to cease its predator management activities in Nevada altogether at least until a new environmental assessment was completed. On the basis of this premise, which we accept as true, 5 APHIS’s primary argument against redressability is that, if federal involvement in predator management in Nevada ceased as a result of this lawsuit, Nevada would pick up where the federal government left off. APHIS argues that Nevada’s current participation in NWSP’s predator control activities and its legal authority to conduct predator control make Nevada an independent cause of the underlying injury, 5 We note that if APHIS’s activities would only be altered rather than halted if WildEarth prevailed, there is no question that WildEarth’s injury would be redressable. Partial relief through a reduction in APHIS’s activities would qualify as redress for standing purposes, Meese v. Keene, 481 U.S. 465, 476–77 (1987), and APHIS has not even argued that Nevada would step in to fill a gap left by a reduction in federal activity rather than a cessation. WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA 17 rendering Molde’s injury not redressable by relief against APHIS. But the mere existence of multiple causes of an injury does not defeat redressability, particularly for a procedural injury. So long as a defendant is at least partially causing the alleged injury, a plaintiff may sue that defendant, even if the defendant is just one of multiple causes of the plaintiff’s injury. The Supreme Court applied this principle in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 525–26 (2007). Massachusetts, along with several other plaintiffs, had brought a procedural challenge to EPA’s failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles. Id. at 505. The underlying concrete injury—harms to Massachusetts and its citizens from climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions—had multiple causes. EPA pointed to the fact that there were numerous contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, including developing nations such as China and India. Id. at 523–24. EPA further argued that “predicted increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing nations . . . [were] likely to offset any marginal domestic decrease” that would result from the type of regulations Massachusetts sought. Id. Nevertheless, the Court held that Massachusetts satisfied the relaxed redressability requirement for procedural claims because a favorable decision by the EPA could reduce “to some extent” the risk posed by global warming. Id. at 526. In Salmon Spawning, we likewise held that the plaintiffs had standing to bring a procedural claim for prospective relief based on the United States’ alleged failure to engage in procedures under the Endangered Species Act that might lead to changes in future salmon harvesting practices. 545 F.3d at 1229. Although salmon harvesting was carried out by both the United States and Canada pursuant to the terms 18 WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA of a treaty, the existence of two causes of the plaintiffs’ injury did not defeat redressability. 6 Id. Similarly, in Barnum Timber Co. v. EPA, we held that a litigant challenging an agency action “need not eliminate any other contributing causes to establish its standing.” 633 F.3d 894, 901 (9th Cir. 2011). The relevant inquiry is instead whether a favorable ruling could redress the challenged cause of the injury. See id. Specifically, in Barnum we concluded that a landowner had standing to sue EPA because EPA regulations decreased the landowner’s property’s value, even though California also regulated the property in question. Id. at 900–01 & n.4. We stated that “[w]hether Barnum might have a cause of action against California does not affect whether Barnum has standing to sue EPA, just as whether Barnum will be successful on the merits in its suit against EPA does not affect whether Barnum has standing to pursue such a suit.” Id. at 900 n.4; see also id. at 901 (“We do not think Barnum must allege that EPA is the sole source of the devaluation of its property.”). Nuclear Information and Resource Service v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NIRS”), 457 F.3d 941 (9th Cir. 2006), upon which APHIS relies, is not to the contrary. In NIRS, we held that the plaintiffs had not alleged a concrete injury caused by the challenged Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”) regulation, because none of the declarations from the plaintiff association’s members 6 In contrast to the prospective claim in Salmon Spawning, the retrospective claims were not redressable because the remedy sought was the undoing of a treaty with Canada, and the court could not influence the decision, which had already been made by the Executive Branch, to enter into that treaty. 545 F.3d at 1225–29. WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA 19 “explain[ed] in any way how [the members’] health may be affected by this regulation,” and because the plaintiff association’s “interest (even if sufficiently concrete) in the health of its members also appear[ed] to be served, not harmed, by the enactment of the new regulations.” Id. at 953, 954. We emphasized that this lack of injury was “dispositive of [the] appeal.” Id. at 951. We went on to explain, however, that to the extent the plaintiffs were harmed by the existence of the NRC regulation, their injury was no longer redressable because the Department of Transportation had a regulation identical in effect to the challenged NRC regulation, and the statute of limitations for any challenge to the Department of Transportation regulation had already run. Id.at 955; Nuclear Info. & Res. Serv. v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp. Research & Special Programs Admin., 457 F.3d 956, 962–63 (9th Cir. 2006). In contrast, here, Nevada does not already have an independent predator damage management program that is entirely redundant with APHIS’s in terms of its effect on WildEarth. And, even if Nevada did have such a program, nothing suggests that litigation challenging it would be time barred or otherwise precluded. Nor does Washington Environmental Council v. Bellon, 732 F.3d 1131 (9th Cir. 2013), show that redressability is lacking here. In Bellon, we held that plaintiffs alleging concrete injuries from climate change had not satisfied the causation and redressability requirements for standing to challenge a failure to adequately regulate oil refineries in Washington because the alleged link between the absence of such regulation and climate change was too tenuous. Id. at 1141–47. Bellon did not involve a procedural right, so the redressability requirements there were not relaxed in the way they are here. Id. at 1145 (distinguishing Massachusetts v. 20 WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA EPA on the ground that it involved a “procedural right”). In addition, causation was lacking because the defendant oil refineries were such minor contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, and the independent third-party causes of climate change were so numerous, that the contribution of the defendant oil refineries was “scientifically indiscernible.” Id. at 1143–44. Molde’s injury, in contrast, has at most two causes, and APHIS contributes very discernibly to that injury. It is the program led by APHIS that is carrying out the hunting, trapping, poisoning, and other acts of predator damage management that detract from Molde’s enjoyment of the outdoors. The conclusion that Molde’s (and thus WildEarth’s) injury is redressable is bolstered by the fact that any independent predator damage management activities by Nevada are hypothetical rather than actual. What, if any, the extent of a Nevada predator damage management program would be if APHIS stopped its activity in Nevada is entirely a matter of speculation because Nevada currently has no such independent program. Nevada has stated, through the Mayer Letter, that it would implement some form of predator damage management if APHIS withdrew from Nevada. But the Mayer Letter states only that the Nevada Department of Wildlife would retain statutory responsibility for predator management if APHIS ceased its involvement. It does not describe what the Department of Wildlife would do to carry out that responsibility on its own. Nevada might adopt practices that would be less harmful to WildEarth’s interests, or it might devote less funding to predator damage management than APHIS currently provides. Indeed, the Nevada environmental assessment found that, at a minimum, a Nevada-run program likely would greatly reduce aerial hunting and the killing of ravens, both of which would WILDEARTH GUARDIANS V. USDA 21 partially redress Molde’s injuries. The notion that Nevada would replace everything APHIS currently does is therefore speculative at best. Such speculation does not defeat standing. Seattle Audubon Soc’y v. Espy, 998 F.2d 699, 703 (9th Cir. 1993) (“Speculation that logging might not occur because of as yet unknown intervening circumstances, or because redrafting the EIS might not change the Secretary’s decision to adopt [the challenged policy] as its owl management plan is not relevant to standing.”).