Opinion ID: 491627
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Causation of Injury

Text: 44 Plaintiffs lack standing due to the absence of specific evidence of personal injury. Because, however, the District Court also held that causation was absent, and because the causation issue will again arise if plaintiffs on remand can supplement the record through additional discovery so as to show personal injury, we find it advisable to correct the District Court's causation holding. 45 For standing to exist under either Sec. 702 of the APA or the Constitution, personal injury must be  'fairly' traceable to the challenged action, and relief from the injury must be 'likely' to follow from a favorable decision. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3324, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). See also Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). While the personal injury inquiry focuses on concrete facts about harm to the plaintiff, causation questions concern the directness of the link between the defendant's challenged action and the alleged injury, and focus on the incentive structure to which the intervening third party, who directly causes the injury, is responding. If the third party's conduct is sufficiently dependent upon the incentives provided by the defendant's action, then the resultant injury will be fairly traceable to that action and a court order binding the defendant will likely cure the plaintiff's harm. 46 These quite separate personal injury and causation inquiries have unfortunately gotten mixed up in this case. The District Court held that the alleged injury could not be fairly traced to the new policy because it is uncertain whether the new policy will actually lead to decreased public access to formerly federal lands. This uncertainty, the District Court explained, is due to an entire chain of events that must occur before plaintiffs are harmed, such as BLM determinations regarding credited acreage and nonnavigability, state and native selections and conveyances, and subsequent privatization. J.A. at 15-17. Additionally, the District Court held that the alleged injury would not likely be remedied by a reinstatement of the old measurement policy, because plaintiffs must rely upon an assumption that injury to their interests is less likely to occur under federal ownership. J.A. at 17. 47 On appeal, the parties have followed the District Court's lead and argued over whether public access rights are likely to shift with shifting land ownership, focusing on differences between state and federal law, historical instances of native assertions of private ownership, and more general notions of property rights. Pl.Br. at 36-41, Fed.Appellees Br. at 11-15, Calista Corp.Br. at 15-18, Alaska Br. at 34-38, Alaska Federation of Natives Br. at 29-38, Pl.Rep.Br. at 15-19. However, the likelihood of injury, whether or not that likelihood depends upon a single event or a chain of events, is properly a concern of the personal injury inquiry, not the causation inquiry (although whether relief is likely to follow remains, of course, a causation question). Thus, whether state or native ownership is more likely to injure plaintiffs than federal ownership is a factor to be taken into account when determining whether plaintiffs have made a sufficient showing of threatened personal injury. 48 If plaintiffs do make such a showing, however, the causation question will properly concern only whether plaintiffs' injury at the hands of the state or the natives is dependent upon the new BLM policy, or is instead the result of independent incentives governing the state's or the natives' decisionmaking process. We think the answer here is clear. Even though the state and the natives may have to take many factors into account in deciding what to do with newly acquired land, the new BLM policy that gave them legal ownership of that land in the first place will always be the primary factor enabling ultimate privatization. In other words, the natural consequence of a policy that transfers land ownership is to transfer the privileges that attend such ownership as well, which include, first and foremost, the power to control the use and enjoyment of land. Thus, any injury from impaired use and enjoyment of transferred land will be fairly traceable to the policy that triggered such a transfer. Similarly, a court order reinstating the old submerged lands chargeability policy would be likely to redress any injury to plaintiffs, because the land in question would no longer be available for state or native ownership and concomitant assertion of ownership rights. 11 III. OTHER CLAIMS 49 Apart from alleging that the challenged policy violates ASA and ANCSA, plaintiffs contend that BLM should have prepared an environmental impact statement (EIS), that BLM should have prepared an environmental assessment (EA) to determine whether to prepare an EIS, and that the decision regarding chargeability of submerged lands violated the APA because no opportunity for notice and comment was afforded interested members of the public. Additionally, plaintiffs challenge the District Court's denial of their motion to amend the complaint and their discovery requests. A. NEPA Claims 50 The District Court opinion addressed neither the merits of plaintiffs' National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) claims (preparation of the EIS and EA) nor their standing to raise such claims. J.A. at 1-19. On remand, the District Court should address these issues.