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Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, et al., Petitioners v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance et al.

Country/Territory
United States of America
Type of court
National - higher court
Date
Jun 14, 2004
Source
UNEP, InforMEA
Court name
Supreme Court of the United States
Seat of court
Washington D.C.
Judge
Scalia
Reference number
542 U.S. 55 (2004)
Language
English
Subject
Wild species & ecosystems, Legal questions
Keyword
Legal proceedings/administrative proceedings Land-use planning
Abstract
This case addressed the question to which extent an agency’s failure to act can be remedied by courts. The Secretary of the Interior had identified certain lands of Utah as “wilderness study areas” (WSAs) and recommended some of these as suitable for wilderness designation. Each WSA was managed in accordance with a land use plan, a document which described allowable uses, goals for the land’s future condition, and next steps. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was in charge of creating these land use plans. Respondents Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance argued that BLM had unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed action to protect Utah public lands from environmental damage and sought declaratory and injunctive relief. They stated, among others, that BLM had allowed the use of off-road vehicles that caused environmental damage and had failed to comply with provisions of its land use plans. The Supreme Court held that BLM’s alleged failures to act were not remediable under the relevant Administrative Procedure Act. It emphasized that a claim could proceed only where a plaintiff asserted that an agency failed to take a discrete agency action that it was required to take. The discrete-action limitation precluded a broad programmatic attack and the required-action limitation ruled out judicial direction of even discrete agency action that was not demanded by law. While the relevant regulations were mandatory as to the object to be achieved, they left BLM discretion to decide how to achieve that object. The principal purpose of the limitation was to protect agencies from undue judicial interference with their lawful discretion and to avoid judicial entanglement in abstract policy disagreements which courts lacked the expertise and information to resolve.
Full text
03-101.ZO.html