Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife

Argued December 3, 1991
Decided June 12, 1992


Full case name:	Manuel Lujan, Jr., Secretary of the Interior, Petitioner v. Defenders of Wildlife, et al.

Citations:	504 U.S. 555; 112 S. Ct. 2130; 119 L. Ed. 2d 351; 60 U.S.L.W. 4495; 1992 U.S. LEXIS 3543; 34 ERC (BNA) 1785; 92 Cal. Daily Op. Service 4985; 92 Daily Journal DAR 7876; 92 Daily Journal DAR 8967; 22 ELR 20913; 6 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 374

Prior history:	Defendant's motion to dismiss granted, Defenders of Wildlife v. Hodel, 658 F.Supp. 43 (D. Minn. 1987); reversed and remanded, 851 F.2d 1035 (8th Cir. 1988); summary judgment granted to plaintiffs, 707 F. Supp. 1082 (D. Minn. 1988); affirmed, sub nom. Defenders of Wildlife v. Lujan, 911 F.2d 117 (8th Cir. 1988); cert. granted, 500 U.S. 915 (1991)

Subsequent history:	None

Holding

Plaintiffs did not have standing to bring suit under the Endangered Species Act, because the threat of a species' extinction alone did not establish an individual and nonspeculative private injury. Eighth Circuit reversed.

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: Byron White, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas

Case opinions

Majority by: Scalia (parts I, II, III-A, IV)
Joined by: Rehnquist, White, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas
Concurrence by: Scalia (part III-B)
Joined by: Rehnquist, White, Thomas
Concurrence by: Kennedy
Joined by: Souter
Concurrence by: Stevens
Dissent by: Blackmun
Joined by: O'Connor

Laws applied

U.S. Const. art. III; 16 U.S.C. § 1536 (§ 7 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973)

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that a group of wildlife conservation and other environmental organizations lacked standing to challenge regulations jointly issued by the U.S. Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce, regarding the geographic area to which a particular section of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 applied.

Said Lily Henning of the Legal Times:

In [this] decision, hailed by the right and attacked by the left as well as by a broad swath of legal scholars, the Court made clear that plaintiffs must suffer a concrete, discernible injury -- not a "conjectural or hypothetical one" -- to be able to bring suit in federal court. It, in effect, made it more difficult for plaintiffs to challenge the actions of a government agency when the actions don't directly affect them. [1]

Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia stated that Defenders had failed to satisfy Constitutional requirements for “injury in fact” that would grant standing under the Endangered Species Act. He wrote that the Court rejected the view that the citizen suit provision of the statute conferred upon “all persons an abstract, self-contained, non-instrumental ‘right’ to have the Executive observe the procedures required by law”. Rather, he explained, the plaintiff must have suffered a tangible and particular harm, not unlike the requirement in common law.