Opinion ID: 158856
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Harm to parties caused by withholding review

Text: 18 Nor are we persuaded Park Lake will be harmed if we withhold review. Our inquiry into harm takes into account financial, operational, and legal consequences flowing from the agency action. See Mobil Exploration, 180 F.3d at 1203. Park Lake has failed to establish that it has felt any effects whatsoever from the RNA designation itself. Park Lake's only claimed injury is from the Forest Service's refusal to review its proposed plan. The Forest Service declined to review the plan due to this litigation over the designation, however, not because of the designation itself. Since Park Lake's claimed injury is not caused by the agency action it challenges, Park Lake has failed to show how it is harmed by withholding review of that action. See Mobil Exploration, 180 F.3d at 1203-04 (procedural wrangling over agency action does not, standing alone, create ripeness); CSG Exploration Co., 930 F.3d at 1486 (unsupported assertions that agency action chilled fuel exploration were insufficient to conclude issue ripe for review). Cf. Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Ass'n v. Watt, 696 F.2d 734, 741-43 (10th Cir. 1982) (pre-enforcement challenge was ripe where plaintiffs presented extensive evidence showing concrete financial harm directly caused by agency action). 19 Moreover, Park Lake may seek review of this issue at a later date. If the Forest Service does in fact place restrictions upon Park Lake's mining activities, Park Lake may challenge those restrictions and the RNA designation in one suit. See, e.g., Ohio Forestry, 523 U.S. at 734-35 (Sierra Club could bring its claim at a later time when plan was applied in a site-specific manner); Clouser, 42 F.3d at 1527 (after Forest Service barred motorized access to mining claim because of claim's location in wilderness area, plaintiffs challenged the restrictions and agency's underlying authority as ultra vires and arbitrary and capricious). 20 Similarly, in Lujan v. National Wildlife Fed'n, 497 U.S. 871 (1990), the Supreme Court held that withholding review of an environmental group's challenge to a land withdrawal review program was harmless. The program there was much like a forest management plan in that it did not have an immediate effect on the plaintiffs, and the agency was required to apply the review program to specific proposed logging plans on specific sites. See id. at 891-92. The Court also held that an individual plaintiff's challenge to the review program for allowing mining activities was not ripe at that time but could be brought later. The Court explained: 21 [A]ny person seeking to conduct mining operations . . . must first obtain approval of a plan of operations. . . . If that permit is granted, there is no doubt that agency action ripe for review will have occurred; nor any doubt that, in the course of an otherwise proper court challenge, [Plaintiff] would be able to call into question the validity of the classification order authorizing the permit. However, before the grant of such a permit, . . . it is impossible to tell where or whether mining activities will occur. Indeed, it is often impossible to tell from a [land] classification order alone whether mining activities will even be permissible. 22 Id. at 892-93 n.3. See also II Kenneth Culp Davis & Richard J. Pierce, Jr., Administrative Law Treatise § 15.16 (3d ed. 1994) (discussing Lujan and stating that challenges to agency adoption of programs are unripe). This reasoning bolsters our determination that Park Lake has not yet been injured by the bare RNA designation at issue here and may bring this challenge when it has been directly affected. 23 The Forest Service's RNA designation did not command Park Lake to do anything, does not subject Park Lake to any criminal or civil liability, and creates neither legal rights nor obligations. See Ohio Forestry, 523 U.S. at 733. Park Lake has simply failed to show any harm whatsoever stemming from delayed review until the Forest Service's action on a proposed mining plan is complete. 24 The purpose of the ripeness doctrine is to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties. Id. (quoting Abbott Labs. at 148-49). In this case, although the RNA designation has been formalized, Park Lake will not feel any effects of the designation until the Forest Service reviews its submitted plan and requests or requires any restrictions upon its mining activities. Waiting until that occurs preserves and protects the administrative process and meets our prudential concerns about interfering with that process or deciding hypothetical scenarios. See, e.g., Toilet Goods Ass'n v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 158, 163-165 (1967) (although agency action was final and issues were purely legal, challenge to FDA regulation was not ripe since later review was possible and the effect of the regulation on the plaintiffs was purely speculative); Yeutter, 911 F.2d at 1416 (courts should use caution against decision where harm is contingent upon uncertain or speculative future administrative action). Review now could result in piecemeal challenges, and further agency action could render this challenge moot. See id. at 1418.