In March, 2013 the Supreme Court agreed to review a case in which an environmental group challenged the U.S. Forest Service analysis of the environmental impacts of a revision to its forest plan. The forest plan is a policy that by itself is not an agency action, but is used to inform project-specific decision making, which is agency action. The Forest Service prepared an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) at the time of the revision as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The environmental group alleged that the EIS for the revised forest plan failed to consider the impact of the plan on fish and amphibians in affected aquatic habitat. The court of appeals rejected the environmental group’s allegation that the EIS analysis of effects on amphibians was inadequate, but held that the EIS ultimately did not satisfy NEPA because it contained no discussion of the effects on particular fish species. The court of appeals went on to explain that NEPA requires programmatic and project-specific EISs as soon as it is reasonably possible to do so.
This case presented ripeness and standing issues for the Court to consider. The case may not be ripe because the forest plan by itself was not an agency action. If the Court ruled on the ripeness doctrine, it could have required that the environmental group challenge only project-specific agency actions that present a controversy ripe for judicial resolution, meaning that only the actions informed by the forest plan could be challenged, not the entire forest plan. Such individual project challenges would require significant additional litigation resources from the groups. As for standing, the Court could have considered whether the environmental groups make use of the resources sufficiently to have standing to challenge the forest plan, or alternatively the project-specific actions pursuant to the plan.
The case also raised the question of whether it is possible to evaluate every potential environmental impact from the revision of the forest service plan at the time the amendments were adopted. The relevance of whether all such impacts are reasonably foreseeable at the time of the revision is lessened because any action pursuant to the plan is subject to an EIS before any individual project is allowed to go forward. However, environmental groups are likely to claim “death by a thousand cuts” to the environment if they cannot challenge programs or policies like the forest plan, on the grounds that individual actions may cumulatively have an impact outside of the scope of narrow challenges to project-specific actions.
This case was important for manufacturers and other businesses that rely on permits or licenses from government agencies to pursue their endeavors efficiently and with legal certainty.
On 6/17/13, the Court dismissed the case as moot. No decision on the merits of the appeal was issued.