Priscilla Summers et al. v. Earth Island Institute et al. (555 U.S. 488)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 3, 2009 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 555 U.S. 488 · 129 S. Ct. 1142
- Decided
- March 3, 2009
- Term
- October Term 2008
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Scalia
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Affirmed and reversed (or vacated) in part
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. Respondents are a group of organizations dedicated to protecting the environment. (We will refer to them collectively as “Earth Island.”) They Seek to prevent the United States Forest Service from enforcing regulations that exempt small fire-rehabilitation and timber-salvage projects from the notice, comment, and appeal process used by the Forest Service for more significant land management decisions. We must determine whether respondents have standing to challenge the regulations in the absence of a live dispute over a concrete application of those regulations. I In 1992, Congress enacted the Forest Service Decision-making and Appeals Reform Act (Appeals Reform Act or Act), Pub. L. 102-381, Tit. Ill, §322, 106 Stat. 1419, note following 16 U. S. C. § 1612. Among other things, this required the Forest Service to establish a notice, comment, and appeal process for “proposed actions of the Forest Service concerning projects and activities implementing land and resource management plans developed under the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974.” Ibid. The Forest Service’s regulations implementing the Act provided that certain of its procedures would not be applied to projects that the Service considered categorically excluded from the requirement to file an environmental impact statement (EIS) or…
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