In 2002, as part of President Bush’s Healthy Forest Initiative, the U.S. Forest Service issued regulations that excluded small timber-clearing projects from the requirements of public notice, comment, and administrative appeal under both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the agency’s internal administrative appeal process. In September 2003, the Forest Service decided to allow salvage logging of 238 acres which had been destroyed in a fire the previous summer in California’s Sequoia National Forest. Under its new regulations, the Forest Service did not conduct a NEPA environmental review before making its decision and did not allow any administrative appeals of the decision.
Several environmental groups brought suit under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), arguing that the Forest Service’s new regulations were facially invalid and that the decision to allow salvage logging was improper. Shortly after the suit was filed, the Forest Service withdrew its decision to allow the salvage logging project. In July 2004, the parties entered into a partial settlement agreement in which the Forest Service agreed not to reauthorize the sale without first preparing a NEPA environmental review for the project. On their part, the environmental groups agreed to “dismiss with prejudice” their claims related to the salvage logging project, although they continued pursuing the suit as a direct facial challenge to the Forest Service regulations.
In July 2005, a federal district court in California issued a nationwide injunction against the new Forest Service regulations, which the 9th Circuit upheld in August 2006.
On March 3, 2009, a sharply divided Supreme Court reversed, holding that the environmental groups lacked standing to challenge the Forest Service regulations. The Court reasoned that after the controversy regarding the salvage logging project had been settled, there was no longer any concrete and particularized injury to the groups. An organization like this must show an “imminent and concrete harm” to its members’ interests at the time the suit is filed.