Opinion ID: 806849
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Food Group

Text: The food group’s members produce, market, and distribute food products that require corn. This petitioner group suggests that EPA’s partial approval of E15 will increase the demand for corn, which is currently used to produce most ethanol on the market. This increased demand will, according to the food group, increase the prices their members have to pay for corn. We need not decide here whether the food group has established Article III standing with this theory because the theory plainly fails to demonstrate prudential standing.1 While we must find Article III standing before addressing the merits of a case, see supra p. 6, “it is entirely proper to consider whether there is prudential standing while leaving the question of 1 Chief Judge Sentelle would hold that the food group has neither Article III nor prudential standing. 16 constitutional standing in doubt, as there is no mandated ‘sequencing of jurisdictional issues.’” Grand Council of Crees (of Quebec) v. FERC, 198 F.3d 950, 954 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (quoting Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 575 (1999)). To demonstrate prudential standing, the food group “must show that the interest it seeks to protect is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute ... in question” or by any provision “integral[ly] relat[ed]” to it. Nat'l Petrochem. Refiners Ass'n v. EPA, 287 F.3d 1130, 1147 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). The food petitioners have not made such a showing. They point out only that their interests are protected by EISA, the legislation that set forth the RFS, because EISA requires EPA to review, among other things, “the impact of the use of renewable fuels on ... the price and supply of agricultural commodities ... and food prices” when EPA sets renewable fuel volume requirements in the future. 42 U.S.C. § 7545(o)(2)(B)(ii)(VI). However, the statute Petitioners challenge here is the CAA’s fuel-waiver provision, Section 211(f)(4)—not EISA. Nor is EISA “integral[ly] relat[ed] to Section 211(f)(4). Both statutes may have fuel as their subject matter, and the RFS may have even incentivized Growth Energy to apply for a waiver under Section 211(f)(4). But more is required to establish an “integral relationship” between the statute a petitioner claims is protecting its interests and the statute actually in question; otherwise, “the zone-of-interests test could be ‘deprive[d] ... of virtually all meaning.” Fed’n for Am. Immigration Reform, Inc. v. Reno, 93 F.3d 897, 903 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Air Courier Conference of Am. v. Am. Postal Workers Union, 498 U.S. 517, 530 (1991)). Hypothetical prudential standing to challenge action under EISA does not give the food petitioners prudential standing to petition for review of action taken pursuant to CAA Section 211(f)(4). 17 The dissent relies on Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak, 132 S. Ct. 2199 (2012), but that decision neither changed the prudential-standing standard nor has any particular applicability to the facts here. The food group’s interest in low corn prices is much further removed from a provision about cars and fuel than a neighboring land owner’s interest is from a statute about land acquisition.