How Gorsuch Blocks Environmental Cases From Ever Getting To Court

[hatrack]

EDIT

But there's another way Gorsuch could deal a huge blow to the environmental community: By preventing their cases from ever getting into court at all. Throughout his career, Gorsuch has found creative ways of throwing judicial roadblocks in front of environmental litigation. In many instances, Gorsuch has ruled that environmentalist groups don't have what is called "standing" to bring a case. Denise Grab, a senior attorney with the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity, found several examples where Gorsuch went "way beyond what's the traditional consensus-type views on standing. He's gone out of his way to take bolder steps than the Supreme Court has taken so far."

So what exactly is standing? To sue, you have to prove you suffered some kind of harm, which is easy when there are direct economic repercussions, like when someone hits your car. Standing becomes harder to prove if your goal is to protect the planet, but environmentalists can nonetheless make a case on behalf of citizens who are hurt if the law isn't enforced or is misinterpreted. As Gorsuch puts it, standing is the demonstration that "it's 'likely, as opposed to merely speculative,'... you've suffered an injury that can be 'redressed by a favorable decision.'"

Many of the environmental decisions where Gorsuch quibbled on procedural grounds involved public lands disputes. In 2015, for example, the Montana-based public-lands advocates, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, sued the US Forest Service over a trail management plan that the group said was too lenient for motor vehicles. The merits of the case were never argued in court, because Gorsuch refused to let the case proceed. He reasoned that the plaintiffs couldn't sue because if they succeeded in overturning the government's plan, it could actually undermine the group's interests. In other words, a weaker version of a rule would be better for the plaintiffs than the potential consequences of no rule at all, so weighing the potential costs and benefits, he concluded the group lacked standing to sue. Here's what Gorsuch wrote at the time:

A victory for Backcountry in this case would seem to do nothing to help—and perhaps much to hurt—its cause…In the end, then, we find ourselves stuck where we started. A further victory for Backcountry in this case promises only more, not fewer, vehicles on forest trails and the group hasn't offered a timely argument how that turn of events might help its members.

If Gorsuch's logic were applied to other cases, plenty of environmental arguments would be at risk, says Grab. "Judge Gorsuch's approach in this case is potentially worrisome to any organization that might want to challenge an agency's tightening of a regulation as not being comprehensive enough," she notes in a memo prepared on Gorsuch's record. "If environmental groups or advocacy groups in general are trying to challenge an agency action as not being sufficient—without getting to court, those issues can not be addressed."

EDIT

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/03/neil-gorsuch-donald-trump-supreme-court-standing

[eppur_se_muova]

1. This acorn didn't fall far from the tree. nt

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/01/neil-gorsuchs-mother-once-ran-the-epa-it-was-a-disaster/