Administrative: Organizations lack standing to challenge final agency rule

Where parties challenging a final rule promulgated by the United States Forest Service failed to tie the contested categorical exclusions to any site-specific application that would affect their interests, their suit was dismissed for lack of standing.

Background

Multiple conservation entities have challenged a final rule promulgated by the United States Forest Service under the Administrative Procedure Act. The parties have now filed cross motions for summary judgment.

Analysis

Article III limits a federal court’s jurisdiction to reviewing cases or controversies, which require that plaintiffs establish both ripeness and standing. Here, the defendants contend that the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the categorical exclusions, or CEs, is not justiciable because the challenge is not ripe, and the plaintiffs lack standing.

The defendants argue that the plaintiffs’ claims are not ripe because they fail to challenge a specific Forest Service project authorized under one of the contested CEs. They rely on Wild Va. v. Council on Env’t Quality, 56 F.4th 281 (4th Cir. 2022), where the Fourth Circuit found the challenge to be unripe because “there are many steps to occur between the promulgation of the 2020 Rule and any such ultimate environmental harm, including, most importantly, that other agencies will need to actually engage in NEPA reviews (or decline to do so) as to particular projects.”

As the plaintiffs note, the Fourth Circuit specifically distinguished the rule at issue in Wild Virginia from CEs. I do not read this statement to imply that the promulgation of a CE necessarily will not be contingent upon actions of a third party that has yet to act. Rather, I agree with the defendants that the CEs at issue are merely one step closer to the site-specific actions courts have found to be ripe for review.

Even assuming the plaintiffs’ claims are ripe, they must still establish standing. The plaintiffs contend that they have standing because the new CEs “will cause harm in the places their members visit and care about, because the Rule deprives them of information to which they are entitled and rely on, and because they must now divert their own scarce resources to mitigate the Rule’s harm to their core missions.”

For the reasons discussed above, I find that the injuries alleged by the plaintiffs are not imminent. The plaintiffs fail to tie the contested CEs to any site-specific application that would affect their interests. Moreover, the plaintiffs concede that the potential harm the CEs may cause are site specific. I thereby find that the plaintiffs lack standing.

Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment denied. Defendants’ cross motions for summary judgment granted.

The Clinch Coalition v. The United States Forest Service, Case No. 2:21-cv-00003, Dec. 3, 2025. WDVA at Abingdon (Jones). VLW 025-3-495. 8 pp.