Opinion ID: 187344
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Petitioners' Procedural Theory of Standing

Text: Alternatively, Petitioners argue that they are injured by Interior's failure to comply with both OCSLA and NEPA requirements. Specifically, Petitioners claim that Interior violated both OCSLA and NEPA because Interior failed to consider both the economic costs of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the Program and the effects of climate change on OCS areas. As the Supreme Court noted in Defenders of Wildlife, a plaintiff may have standing if it can show that an agency failed to abide by a procedural requirement that was designed to protect some threatened concrete interest of the plaintiff. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 573 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. 2130. In such cases, the omission of a procedural requirement does not, by itself, give a party standing to sue. Fla. Audubon Soc'y, 94 F.3d at 664. Rather, a procedural-rights plaintiff must show not only that the defendant's acts omitted some procedural requirement, but also that it is substantially probable that the procedural breach will cause the essential injury to the plaintiff's own interest. Id. at 664-65. A plaintiff must show that he is not simply injured as is everyone else, lest the injury be too general for court action, and suited instead for political redress. Id. at 667 n. 4. Petitioners may bring both their OCSLA- and NEPA-based climate change claims under their procedural standing theory. Petitioners have shown that they possess a threatened particularized interest, namely their enjoyment of the indigenous animals of the Alaskan areas listed in the Leasing Program. The Supreme Court has noted that the desire to use or observe an animal species, even for purely esthetic purposes, is undeniably a cognizable interest for purpose of standing. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 562-63, 112 S.Ct. 2130. This interest, however, will not suffice on its own without any description of concrete plans, or indeed even any specification of when  the plaintiff will be deprived of the opportunity to observe the potentially harmed species. Id. at 564, 112 S.Ct. 2130. Petitioners' affidavits demonstrate a sufficiently immediate and definite interest in enjoyment of the animals. Petitioners' members have detailed in their affidavits definitive dates in the near future. Second, Petitioners have shown, solely for the sake of an Article III standing analysis, that Interior's adoption of an irrationally based Leasing Program could cause a substantial increase in the risk to their enjoyment of the animals affected by the offshore drilling, and that our setting aside and remanding of the Leasing Program would redress their harm.