Court Opinion

ID: 8883937
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 21:21:19.329357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:48.830856
License: Public Domain

HAMLEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
In my view Sierra Club has standing to prosecute this lawsuit. It seems to me that the rationale of recent Supreme Court pronouncements in this area, if not the precise holdings, call for such a determination. In Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 154, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970), as the majority itself notes, the Supreme Court made it clear that the element of legal wrong need not be economic in nature, but may be aesthetic, conservational or recreational.
The Sierra Club represents thousands of members who have a deep interest in aesthetic, conservational and recreational values of a kind intended to be safeguarded by the statutes in question, and the regulations and practices thereunder. If these statutes are being disregarded, or the regulations and practices thereunder are invalid, and the result is that the described values are being undermined or disregarded, it seems to me the Sierra Club members may assert that a legal wrong is being inflicted upon them — a wrong which their chosen organization has standing to resist in this lawsuit.
However, for the reasons stated in the last section of the majority opinion, under the heading “The merits,” I am convinced that the granting of the preliminary injunction amounted to an abuse of discretion and therefore must be reversed. The trial court acted with painstaking care which is deserving of high commendation, but, in my view, there is an inadequate legal foundation for the order entered.