Opinion ID: 172146
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The district court's opinion and order

Text: The majority opinion interprets the district court's opinion and order as having decided Oklahoma's motion on the likelihood-of-success-on-the-merits prong of the preliminary injunction standard. (Maj. op. at 776-77.) If that interpretation is correct, the district court was obligated, under Rule 52(a), to make findings of fact broad enough to cover all material issues at stake in a consideration of Oklahoma's likelihood of succeeding on the merits of its RCRA citizen-suit claim. OCI Wyo., L.P. v. PacifiCorp, 479 F.3d 1199, 1203 (10th Cir.2007) (quotation omitted). And as we made clear in Burlington Northern, success on the merits under § 6972(a)(1)(B) requires not proof of actual harm to health or the environment, but rather a demonstration that there may be a risk of harm. 505 F.3d at 1020. Despite this clear mandate as to the standard for success on the merits under RCRA's citizen-suit provision, and as the majority opinion recognizes, the district court instead applied to its brief factual findings a legal standard requiring proof of actual causation of harm: The State has not yet met its burden of proving that bacteria in the waters of the IRW are caused by the application of poultry litter, and [a]t this junction in the action, the State has failed to meet the applicable standard of showing that the bacteria levels in the IRW can be traced to the application of poultry litter. (Dist. ct. op. at 1, 7 (emphasis added); see Maj. op. at 776-77.) The district court correctly held that because Oklahoma was seeking a traditionally disfavored injunction, the State was required to make a heightened showing of the four preliminary injunction factors. (Dist. ct. op. at 3-5, citing O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal v. Ashcroft, 389 F.3d 973, 975 (10th Cir.2004) (en banc) (per curiam).) Yet a heightened showing of RCRA's requirement that there may be a risk of harm from a defendant's conduct, Burlington Northern, 505 F.3d at 1020, is simply not tantamount to a showing of something entirely differentnamely, that a defendant's conduct has caused such harm. [1]