Court Opinion

ID: 9488059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:35:14.27835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:40.242246
License: Public Domain

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
In a remarkably ambitious complaint, appellants sought to accomplish through the courts what they apparently had failed to achieve in the political branches and the administrative process: that is, they prayed the district court to enjoin the extension of the Alcohol Fuel Tax Credit created by 26 U.S.C. § 40 (1988) to fuel blends containing gasoline and ethyl tertiary butyl ether (“ETBE”). The district court granted summary judgment against them as they all lacked standing to bring the action. As I think the district court was wholly correct, I would affirm.
I.
To meet “the irreducible constitutional minimum of standing,” plaintiffs must establish three elements: (1) injury in fact, i.e., the plaintiff must have suffered an invasion of a legally-protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) causation (or traceability), i.e., the injury has to be “ ‘fairly ... trace[able]’ to the challenged action of the defendant, and not ... th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court;” and (3) redressability, i.e., it must be likely that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision by the court. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 559-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (citations omitted). These requirements are an “indispensable part of the plaintiffs case, each element [of which] must be supported in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of proof....” Id. To survive a summary judgment motion, a “plaintiff can no longer rest on ... ‘mere allegations,’ but must ‘set forth’ by affidavit or other evidence ‘specific facts’ ” supporting each element of standing. Id. 504 U.S. at 561, 112 S.Ct. at 2137 (citing Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e)).
As the majority notes, in the NEPA context, we have held that plaintiff meets the injury requirement by demonstrating that an agency’s failure to prepare an environmental impact statement (“EIS”) creates “ ‘risk that serious environmental impacts will be overlooked,’ ” City of Los Angeles v. NHTSA, 912 F.2d 478, 492 (D.C.Cir.1990) (quoting City of Davis v. Coleman, 521 F.2d 661, 671 (9th Cir.1975)), and that the plaintiff has “a sufficient geographical nexus to the site of the challenged project that he may be expected to suffer whatever environmental consequences the project may have.” Id. (citation omitted). Though we have phrased the plaintiffs burden differently in the NEPA context, she still must be able to demonstrate, at the summary judgment stage by evidence of specific facts, the genuine likelihood of an overlooked “risk” of “serious environmental impacts” to particularized interests resulting from the failure to prepare an EIS. See id. at 492, 494 (“NRDC has satisfied the geographical nexus requirement of NEPA standing by showing the likelihood of particularly devastating consequences to NRDC members in California.”) (emphasis added).
In this case, the district court’s determination that appellants had not sufficiently set forth specific facts to survive summary judgment on the issue of standing is correct. Appellants not only have failed to demonstrate a causal nexus between the Department of Treasury’s action and an actual risk of an environmental impact, but also have not demonstrated a sufficient geographical nexus to lands which are likely to be injured as a result of the ETBE tax credit, and thus have not been “injured in fact.”
A. Causation.
In ord,ter to demonstrate standing, a NEPA plaintiffimust show, among other things, that the agency has failed to prepare an EIS in the face of a reasonable risk that environmental harm will occur. City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 492. In the context of a NEPA challenge to an IRS rule extending a tax credit to individual taxpayers, the “risk” as*885sessment presents a special problem for the NEPA plaintiff. Here, we must consider the tax standing cases, see, e.g., Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984); Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976); Fulani v. Brady, 935 F.2d 1324 (D.C.Cir.1991), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1048, 112 S.Ct. 912, 116 L.Ed.2d 812 (1992), because the risk assessment depends upon “the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Simon, 426 U.S. at 42, 96 S.Ct. at 1926. As the Supreme Court has noted in another context,
When ... a plaintiffs asserted injury arises from the government’s allegedly unlawful regulation (or lack of regulation) of someone else, ... causation and redressa-bility ordinarily hinge on the response of the regulated (or regulable) third party to the government action or inaction — and perhaps on the response of others as well. The existence of one or more of the essential elements of standing “depends on the unfettered choices made by independent actors not before the courts and whose exercise of broad and legitimate discretion the courts cannot presume either to control or to predict.”
Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 562, 112 S.Ct. at 2137 (emphasis in original) (quoting ASARCO, Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 615, 109 S.Ct. 2037, 2044, 104 L.Ed.2d 696 (1989) (opinion of Kennedy, J.)). In this particular case, third party alternative fuel producers must first avail themselves of the tax credit before any genuine risk of environmental harm would arise. The speculative nature of that contingency highlights the “special problems attendant upon the establishment of standing in ... tax cases, when a litigant seeks to attack the tax exemption of a third party.” Fulani, 935 F.2d at 1327 (internal quotations omitted; citations omitted).
Although it is fashioned as a NEPA challenge, appellants’ case is in fact a challenge to the IRS’s extension of a tax credit to third parties: the ETBE producers. Therefore, to evaluate the claim, we look to the likely effect of the credit on those third parties. Although neither we nor the Supreme Court have ever answered a tax standing question on facts exactly parallel to those presented by appellants’ complaint, both courts have found no standing present in cases instructively analogous and indeed rejected plaintiffs having arguably less tenuous claims to standing than do appellants.
In Simon, supra, indigents challenged the IRS’s modification of a previous revenue ruling requiring that charitable hospitals care for patients without charge or at rates below cost. 426 U.S. at 32, 96 S.Ct. at 1921. The modification extended charitable status to hospitals which denied non-emergency treatment to indigents. Id. at 30-31, 96 S.Ct. at 1920-21. The Court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the ruling because they could not meet the causation requirement. Id. at 40-46, 96 S.Ct. at 1925-28. The Court noted that “[t]he implicit corollary of [plaintiffs’] allegation is that a grant of [their] requested relief, resulting in a requirement that all hospitals serve indigents as a condition to favorable tax treatment, would ‘discourage’ hospitals from denying their services to [plaintiffs].” Id. at 42, 96 S.Ct. at 1926. The Court rejected that reasoning, stating, “It is purely speculative whether the denials of service specified in the complaint fairly can be traced to petitioners’ ‘encouragement’ or instead result from decisions made by the hospitals without regard to the tax implications.” Id. at 42-43, 96 S.Ct. at 1926. Again, in Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556, the Court rejected the standing of third-party challengers to tax exemptions. In response to a claim by parents of black children attending public schools in districts undergoing desegregation that an IRS grant of tax exemptions to racially segregated private schools interfered with their children’s right to an integrated education, the Court noted that the injury to plaintiffs was “highly indirect” because it “results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.” 468 U.S. at 757, 104 S.Ct. at 3327 (citation omitted). The Court reasoned that it was “entirely speculative ... whether withdrawal of a tax exemption from any particular school would lead the school to change its policies. It is just as speculative whether any given parent of a child attending such a private school would decide to transfer the *886child to public school as a result of any changes in educational or financial policy made by the private school once it was threatened with loss of tax-exempt status.” Id. at 758, 104 S.Ct. at 3328 (citation omitted).
As in Simon and Wright, the line of causation in this case is “highly speculative.” The danger that an increased risk of environmental injury might be overlooked here depends, in the first instance, upon the decisions of fuel manufacturers to increase their ETBE production or, alternatively, to enter the market in order to take advantage of the tax credit. Although the Secretary promulgated this rule hopeful that it “may increase the demand for domestic ethanol,” 54 Fed.Reg. 48,639, 48,640 (1989) (emphasis added), whether manufacturers in fact take advantage of the credit remains to be seen, and “the courts cannot presume either to control or to predict,” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 562, 112 S.Ct. at 2137 (citation omitted), this contingency.
Even as it estimated in hearings that 350 million gallons of ethanol for ETBE manufacture might be necessary by 1995, the Renewable Fuels Association cautioned that its estimate was “entirely dependent upon factors which the ethanol industry will not control: the cost of competing feedstock — methanol; the environmental standards established for gasolines of the future; and the continuation of federal incentives for ethanol blended fuels.” Additionally, the chemical industry press has noted that “[ajnother obstacle for ETBE is the limited availability of isobutyl-ene.” Carl Verbanic, ETBE: Ethanol’s Motor Fuel Hope?, Chemical Business, October, 1988, at 39. Thus, according to supporters of the ruling, whether the industry will take advantage of the tax credit depends upon market factors beyond the government’s, and even the industry’s, control. Indeed, as the district court noted, notwithstanding that the ruling had been in force for more than four years at the time of argument below, ETBE was still not produced commercially in this country. Against this uncertain backdrop, it can hardly be said that an increased risk of environmental harms is likely as a result of the IRS rule.
Thus, contrary to the majority’s conclusion that “the Secretary’s suggestion that appellants lack standing because the injury they allege is speculative confuses the anticipated environmental consequences of the tax credit with the NEPA injury appellants actually claim,” maj. op. at 879, I believe the Secretary has it right. Appellants meet the NEPA injury requirement only if their evidence demonstrates a reasonable risk of severe environmental harm coupled with the failure to prepare an EIS. See City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 492. Otherwise put, the federal action — in this case the extension of the tax credit — must cause the creation or increase of an environmental risk which the EIS might disclose. That risk cannot be measured where the environmental consequences of the tax credit are highly speculative and subject to independent third-party action and market forces.
Thus, appellants’ claim to standing fails at the very first step of causation. Even if it did not, however, appellants’ showing on the further steps are even more attenuated than the first. Even if we assume that manufacturers were likely to take advantage of the tax credit, increasing production of ETBE and therefore ethanol, appellants are short of demonstrating by evidence that at that unspecified point in the future this increase would come from devotion of greater areas of land to the agricultural production of corn, sugar cane, and sugar beets, as opposed to the reorientation of lands already under cultivation, or other means of increased agricultural production. Even if they had demonstrated that step, or if we could presume it, appellants’ standing would still trip at the next stage of NEPA standing analysis: geographical nexus.
B. Geographical Nexus.
City of Los Angeles requires that the NEPA plaintiff demonstrate “a sufficient geographical nexus to the site of the challenged project that he may be expected to suffer whatever environmental consequences the project may have.” 912 F.2d at 492 (citation omitted). The majority today concludes that this important facet of the “injury *887in fact” requirement of standing may be met with speculation and baseless assumptions.
Appellant Jensen submitted a sworn statement to the court that she and her family regularly use several recreational areas abutting farm land in Minnesota, as did other appellants in other states. The majority notes that these farm lands are “susceptible to increased corn production.” Maj. op. at 881. Jensen claimed in her sworn statement that local farmers “are likely to abandon [their tax] subsidy and develop these lands in order to take advantage of the tax credit.” Maj. op. at 881. Additionally, Jensen pointed to speculation by state representatives that the ETBE credit was likely to increase corn farming in Minnesota. Combined with the fact that Minnesota is a large corn producing state, the majority concludes from this evidence that Jensen meets the geographical nexus test. Id.
Apart from the causation problems addressed in the previous section, appellants’ case fails to satisfy the minimal geographic nexus test. Even in the NEPA context, plaintiffs must be able to demonstrate that lands which they enjoy are likely to be subjected to an increased risk of environmental damages. See City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 494. Plaintiffs’ proffer fails to demonstrate that nexus. Even if we assume the attenuated steps of causation to the point at which increased corn production would occur, nothing in the plaintiffs’ proof demonstrates that land enjoyed by them would likely be affected by the increased corn production. The fact that Minnesota is the fourth largest corn producing state in the Union does not demonstrate that those specific lands within Minnesota which Jensen enjoys are likely to be affected. Again, that contingency rests upon the independent choices of third-party farmers who may or may not choose to take advantage of the increased demand for com (or other ethanol sources). See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 562-63, 112 S.Ct. at 2137. Ms. Jensen herself admitted in a deposition that she was unaware of, and in fact, unable to discern, which specific lands were likely to be affected by increased grain production, as the following dialogue suggests:
Q. Do you knew precise (sic) what the impacts would be?
A. (By Ms. Jensen). Studies have shown that regular use of com pesticides have shown up in the ground water and I can only infer that the ... additional use of these pesticides would increase the ground water contamination in the state.
Q. Do you have any way of knowing which farmer is going to increase his crop at this time as a result of this incentive?
A. No.
Q. Do you have any way of knowing where an additional pesticide application may occur?
A. No.
Q. Do you believe that there is any way you could know that without further academic study taking place?
A. There is absolutely no way.
Defendants’ Exhibit 8 at 137-38.
Ms. Jensen’s inability to point out specific areas that are likely to be affected by the crop increase illustrates why the causation element cannot be met where the independent action of a third party is a necessary link in the causation chain. In order to demonstrate standing, Ms. Jensen must be able to demonstrate that the lands she uses are likely to be affected. She, as well as the other plaintiffs in this case, has not done so.
City of Los Angeles requires no less. In that case, we found that the geographical nexus test was met specifically because the plaintiffs were successful in demonstrating that the area in which they lived, California, would likely be subject to “particularly devastating consequences ” relating to the greenhouse effect which might occur as a result of a proposed rollback of fuel economy standards. 912 F.2d at 494 (emphasis added). Appellants have not demonstrated that areas they enjoy will or are even likely to be damaged by the federal action which they claim requires an environmental impact statement.1 The majority opinion today *888obliterates the requirement that NEPA plaintiffs prove a geographical nexus to the challenged action. See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 563, 112 S.Ct. at 2137-38.
II.
Plaintiffs may ask, “If we don’t have standing to challenge this regulation, who does?” The answer to that question may, in fact, be “no one.” As the Supreme Court has noted, “The assumption that if respondents have no standing to sue, no one would have standing, is not a reason to find standing.” Schlesinger v. Reservists to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 227, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 2935, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974). As we have previously observed, “[T]he entire concept of Article III standing rests on separation of powers.... ” Haitian Refugee Ctr. v. Gracey, 809 F.2d 794, 804 (D.C.Cir.1987); see generally, Antonin Sealia, The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers, 17 Suffolk U.L.Rev. 881 (1983). “[Standing inquiry must be answered by reference to the Art. Ill notion that federal courts may exercise power only in the last resort, and as a necessity_” Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. at 752, 104 S.Ct. at 3325 (citation omitted). Appellants have not demonstrated that they are affected in their individual capacities by the IRS’s failure to prepare an EIS. Their arguments are based upon a number of highly speculative links in a chain of causation. Perhaps their claims are best heard by our sister branches of government.

. The majority also relies on Idaho Conservation League v. Mumma, 956 F.2d 1508 (9th Cir.1992). *888Assuming for purposes of this opinion that the Ninth Circuit's reasoning in that decision was correct, it nonetheless does not support a conclusion that appellants have standing in the present case. The Ninth Circuit granted standing there, in the face of uncertainty regarding sites to be affected by development, because, inter alia, the uncertainty would be resolved by further government action, i.e., designation of development areas by the Forest Service. Id. at 1515-16 ("An added wrinkle in this case is the fact that the agency itself will have to take further action ... before authorizing site-specific development. Thus, not only is the risk contingent, it also is subject to future safeguards from the same agency and statutory source.”). Here, in contrast, the IRS has completed its involvement in the case. The uncertainty in this case arises not from further government action, but from further action by independent third parties, farmers and manufacturers.