Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation

Section 702 of the APA permits review only for a person suffering legal wrong or who is adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute. A plaintiff proceeding under the APA must identify agency action that affects it; where no statute independently authorizes review, the challenged action must also be final under § 704. The Court accepted that recreational use and aesthetic enjoyment fall within the zone of interests protected by FLPMA and NEPA, and it assumed the Federation could sue associationally if one of its members satisfied the APA requirements.

The affidavits could be linked geographically to two particular BLM orders: a 4,500-acre classification termination near South Pass-Green Mountain, Wyoming, and an order concerning the Arizona Strip. But that linkage did not establish injury. Peterson said only that she used federal lands "in the vicinity" of a vast area, while the challenged order affected only a small portion of it. Erman's assertion of use in the vicinity of the Arizona Strip was likewise too broad to show use of, or injury from activity on, the land affected by the order.

Rule 56 required the Federation, as the party bearing the burden of establishing its right to APA review, to offer specific facts showing a genuine issue for trial. On summary judgment, a court must credit specific factual assertions that conflict with the movant's evidence, but it need not infer missing essential facts from a general assertion of injury. Treating conclusory statements in an affidavit as if they supplied all needed details would defeat Rule 56's demand for evidentiary specificity.

The Court distinguished United States v. SCRAP because SCRAP arose on a motion to dismiss, where general allegations are presumed to include supporting facts. At summary judgment, by contrast, a litigant must move beyond the pleadings and provide evidence sufficient to support each essential element of its claim.

The phrase "land withdrawal review program" referred not to a single order, regulation, or closed set of decisions, but to BLM's continuing and changing operations in reviewing withdrawals, making classifications, and developing land-use plans. A general description of ongoing agency administration is not itself agency action, much less final agency action, within the meaning of APA §§ 702 and 704.

The APA ordinarily requires a plaintiff to challenge a particular final action that has an actual or immediately threatened effect on the plaintiff. A plaintiff injured by one discrete action cannot, on that basis alone, seek a court decree correcting every alleged illegality in an agency's nationwide administration of a statutory program. System-wide relief may sometimes follow from invalidating a specific final rule or order, but only when the rule or order itself is properly before the court.

The Court also noted that even the identified classification and withdrawal orders might not yet be ripe for review. Those orders often did not themselves authorize immediate mining or establish that mining would occur. More concrete action, such as approval of a mine plan, agency inaction after a required mining notice, or actual mining causing harm, could be necessary before the effect on a member and the dispute's factual contours were sufficiently definite.

The Federation filed the new affidavits after the hearing on the Government's summary-judgment motion, even though the court's subsequent request was for supplemental legal briefing on standing rather than additional evidence. Rules 56(c) and 6(d) generally required opposing affidavits to be filed before the hearing.

Under Rule 6(b), a post-deadline extension required a motion, a showing of cause, and excusable neglect. The Federation made no adequate showing explaining why it had failed to submit the evidence earlier. It had had substantial time to respond to the Government's challenge to standing and was on notice, at the latest when the hearing was scheduled, that standing remained contested.

The Court rejected the claim that earlier favorable rulings made the late filing excusable. A litigant cannot assume that a court has definitively resolved an issue until the court says so, and confidence in the strength of existing evidence does not excuse failure to timely support that evidence. Although the District Court could have admitted the affidavits, it was not compelled to do so.

The Federation offered an affidavit from a vice president stating that inadequate information and public-participation opportunities impaired its conservation mission. Even assuming that the affidavit adequately alleged organizational injury and that the relevant statutes protected such interests, APA review still required identification of the particular agency action responsible for the injury.

The affidavit attributed the injury only to failures associated with the land withdrawal review program as a whole. Because that program was not an identifiable action or event, the affidavit did not satisfy the APA's requirement of a concrete agency action subject to judicial review. The Federation therefore could not obtain general judicial supervision of BLM's day-to-day operations.