Manuel Lujan, Jr., Secretary of the Interior, Petitioner v. Defenders of Wildlife et al.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), § 1531 et seq., seeks to protect species of animals against threats to their continuing existence caused by man. The ESA instructs the Secretary of the Interior to promulgate by regulation a list of those species which are either endangered or threatened under enumerated criteria, and to define the critical habitat of these species. In 1978, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce respectively, promulgated a joint regulation stating that the obligations imposed by § 7(a)(2) extend to actions taken in foreign nations. The next year, however, the Interior Department began to reexamine its position. A revised joint regulation, reinterpreting § 7(a)(2) to require consultation only for actions taken in the United States or on the high seas, was promulgated in 1986. Shortly thereafter, the respondents, organizations dedicated to wildlife conservation and other environmental causes, filed this action against the Secretary of the Interior, seeking a declaratory judgment that the new regulation was in error as to the geographic scope of § 7(a)(2), and an injunction requiring the Secretary to promulgate a new regulation restoring the initial interpretation. The District Court granted the Secretary’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed by a divided vote. The Supreme Court held that the respondents bore the burden of showing standing by establishing, inter alia, that they had suffered an injury in fact, i.e., a concrete and particularized, actual or imminent invasion of a legally protected interest. Standing was particularly difficult to show here, since third parties, rather than respondents, were the object of the Government action or inaction to which the respondents objected. The Respondents did not demonstrate that they suffered an injury in fact. Even if they would establish that funded activities abroad threatened certain species, they failed to show that one or more of their members would thereby be directly affected apart from the members’ special interest in the subject. The intent of members to revisit project sites at some indefinite future time, at which time they would presumably be denied the opportunity to observe endangered animals, did not suffice, for they did not demonstrate an "imminent" injury. The respondents also argued that suit could be brought by anyone with an interest in studying or seeing endangered animals anywhere on the globe and anyone with a professional interest in such animals. The Court held that these were purely speculative, nonconcrete injuries. The Court furthermore emphasized that a plaintiff claiming only a generally available grievance about government, unconnected with a threatened concrete interest of his own, could not base this claim on the statute’s citizen suit provision. The judgment was therefore reversed, and the case was remanded due to lack of standing.