Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation (1989)
- Docket
- 89-640
- Decided
- 1989-01-01
Summary
Question: Does an organization representing private citizens who use public land "in the vicinity" of areas affected by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land-use designations have standing to challenge those designations under section 10(e) of the Administrative Procedure Act? Does standing to challenge several individual BLM decision confer standing to challenge those decisions as a whole, even when the organization's members are not affected by the bulk of the decisions? Conclusion: No and no. In a 5-to-4 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court held that NWF did not have standing to challenge the land-use designations. The two timely affidavits were not enough to show that the group members had actually been affected by the BLM decisions. Even if they had been, and if the four additional affidavits had been considered (which the Supreme Court ruled had not been necessary), the right to challenge the individual decisions would not have conveyed a right to challenge all of them. The decisions were not a single "agency action" but rather a series of actions which would have to be challenged individually. "The case-by-case approach that this requires is understandably frustrating to an organization such as [NWF], which has as its objective across-the-board protection of our Nation's wildlife and the streams and forests that support it," wrote Justice Scalia. "But this is the traditional, and remains the normal, mode of operation of the courts. ... Until confided to us, ... more sweeping actions are for the other branches."