Opinion ID: 613271
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Stephens County and Apache Tribe

Text: We now address the justiciability of Tarrant's dormant Commerce Clause claim that is based on its attempts to access water in Oklahoma that is not subject to the Compact. This issue stands in contrast to the one we addressed in 2008 when we held that Tarrant's claims regarding compacted water are justiciable. OWRB had argued that the case was not ripe and should be dismissed because the OWRB had yet to act on Tarrant's water appropriation permit applications. We rejected that argument because a plaintiff challenging the constitutionality of a state statute has a sufficiently adverse legal interest to a state enforcement officer sued in his representative capacity to create a substantial controversy when ... the plaintiff shows an appreciable threat of injury flowing directly from the statute. Sevenoaks, 545 F.3d at 910 (quotation omitted). Because Oklahoma's statutes require the OWRB to treat in-state and out-of-state water use differently in ruling on applications, the OWRB is arguably precluded from granting [Tarrant's] application. [Tarrant] has thus shown it faces an appreciable threat of injury sufficient to invoke federal jurisdiction. Id. Tarrant had filed an application with the OWRB for each of its Beaver Creek, Cache Creek, and Kiamichi River plans, and those applications formed the basis for our justiciability decision in Sevenoaks. By contrast, neither Tarrant, the Stephens County landowners, nor the Apache Tribe has filed an application with the OWRB regarding Tarrant's hopes to use the Stephens County or Apache Tribe water. The question here, therefore, is whether Tarrant has a justiciable claim with respect to either its Stephens County or Apache Tribe agreements. 1. The District Court Order The district court found that Tarrant lacks standing to raise the Stephens County claim and that the Apache Tribe claim is not yet ripe. See Tarrant II, 2010 WL 2817220, at . On the Stephens County issue, the court analyzed the Oklahoma statutes that Tarrant seeks to challenge and failed to find any statutes that apply to Tarrant's contract. Most of the statutes apply only to the OWRB stream water application process. Id. at -2. The remaining statutes also do not apply to the Stephens County groundwater that Tarrant seeks to purchase. Id. Without any application pending before the OWRB and without any statute that Tarrant challenges applying even if there were an application, Tarrant suffered no article III injury that would create standing. Id. In a footnote, the court added that, because none of the challenged Oklahoma statutes applies to the Stephens County water at issue, the amended complaint fails to state a claim and therefore could be dismissed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Id. at  n. 7. On the Apache Tribe issue, the district court found the agreement too speculative to support justiciability. Id. at . The MOU contained nothing more than a promise to negotiate in good faith if and when the Apache Tribe determined its water rights. Id. The court said it was not clear that the Apache Tribe had any water it was willing to sell to Tarrant, and, therefore, the case was not ripe. Id. 2. Tarrant's Arguments In its brief, Tarrant refers only obliquely and never explicitly to the Stephens County issue and instead focuses on the Apache Tribe agreement. Tarrant's arguments about the MOU, however, address standing  the basis for the district court's dismissal of the Stephens County claim  rather than ripeness, the basis for the district court's dismissal of the Apache Tribe claim. After OWRB in its Answer Brief challenges Tarrant on this point, Tarrant claims the same analysis applies to both doctrines. Aplt. Reply Br. at 1. Tarrant offers two arguments against the district court's rulings. First, Tarrant claims it does not need to enter into specific water transactions to create a justiciable controversy. Second, Tarrant reads the district court's order on justiciability to require for standing that the Oklahoma statutes be the only obstacle preventing it from exporting the Oklahoma water to Texas. Tarrant contends that obstacles other than the statutes should not prevent the court from reaching Tarrant's challenge to the Oklahoma statutes as they apply to non-compacted water. 3. OWRB's Arguments OWRB focuses on the Apache Tribe claim and argues that the relevant issue is ripeness, not standing. OWRB emphasizes that Tarrant's promise to work cooperatively with the Apache Tribe does not constitute an agreement to buy and sell water. OWRB further argues that the Apache Tribe may decide not to file an application with the OWRB if the Tribe's water rights are federal in origin and not subject to state administration. See Aplt. App. Vol. III, 830. According to OWRB, Tarrant will not suffer hardship from a dismissal for lack of ripeness. Such a dismissal effectively calls for the Apache Tribe to ascertain what water rights it has and whether the Tribe wants to sell water to Tarrant before Tarrant can challenge the constitutionality of the Oklahoma statutes as they apply to Apache Tribe water. 4. Stephens County Standing under Article III of the Constitution requires that an injury be concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the challenged action; and redressable by a favorable ruling. Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 2743, 2752, 177 L.Ed.2d 461 (2010). As for the injury element, the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in fact  an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (quotations and citations omitted). As we have explained, a main focus of the standing inquiry is whether plaintiff has suffered a present or imminent injury, as opposed to a mere possibility, or even probability, of future injury. Morgan v. McCotter, 365 F.3d 882, 888 (10th Cir. 2004). The OWRB has jurisdiction over the permitting process for groundwater. See OKLA. STAT. tit. 82, § 1020.7. The groundwater permit process is separate from the surface water appropriation application process. See generally id. § 1020. The criteria that the OWRB uses in deciding on applications for groundwater permits are different from surface water applications and are enumerated in a different statute. Compare id. § 1020.9 with id. § 105.12. Tarrant has standing to challenge the Oklahoma statutes governing the OWRB's surface water appropriation permit process because it is an applicant on its Beaver Creek, Cache Creek, and Kiamichi River plans and the statutes interfere with its applications. See Sevenoaks, 545 F.3d at 910 (holding that the OWRB is arguably precluded from granting [Tarrant's] application. [Tarrant] has thus shown it faces an appreciable threat of injury sufficient to invoke federal jurisdiction.) However, Tarrant lacks standing on its claim based on the Stephens County groundwater. None of the Oklahoma statutes that Tarrant wishes to challenge as violating the dormant Commerce Clause applies to Tarrant's potential groundwater interest, and it has not filed an application to appropriate groundwater. Tarrant lacks standing to challenge Oklahoma's surface water permit application laws based on the Stephens County claim because it has not suffered a justiciable injury. We think Tarrant's claim fails on ripeness grounds as well. Neither Tarrant nor the Stephens County landowners are applicants for a permit. That Tarrant or one of the landowners in Stephens County may in the future apply for a groundwater permit is an insufficient basis for a ripe case or controversy. [4] 5. Apache Tribe The ripeness doctrine aims to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements. Abbott Labs. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 148, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967), overruled on other grounds by Califano v. Sanders, 430 U.S. 99, 105, 97 S.Ct. 980, 51 L.Ed.2d 192 (1977). Like standing, the ripeness inquiry asks whether the challenged harm has been sufficiently realized at the time of trial. The ripeness issue, however, focuses not on whether the plaintiff was in fact harmed, but rather whether the harm asserted has matured sufficiently to warrant judicial intervention. McCotter, 365 F.3d at 890 (quotation omitted). As we have explained, [i]n determining whether a claim is ripe, a court must look at [1] the fitness of the issue for judicial resolution and [2] the hardship to the parties of withholding judicial consideration. Skull Valley, 376 F.3d at 1237 (quotation omitted). The relationship between the Red River Compact and surface water owned by the Apache Tribe is fraught with complex questions of federalism, tribal sovereignty, and the reserved water rights doctrine. We should not resolve the issue unless and until it is determined what rights the Apache Tribe has to Oklahoma surface water and whether the Apache Tribe decides to sell that water to Tarrant. There will be no hardship to Tarrant from this dismissal as it waits for the Apache Tribe to ascertain its water rights and then negotiates a contract to export the water to Texas. In evaluating ripeness the central focus is on whether the case involves uncertain or contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all. Initiative and Referendum Inst. v. Walker, 450 F.3d 1082, 1097 (10th Cir.2006) (quotations omitted). That statement accurately describes the claim at issue here. The district court correctly dismissed the Apache Tribe issue as not ripe.