Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife
Case Date: 11/04/1992
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Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court case decided on June 12, 1992, in which the court held that a group of American wildlife conservation and other environmental organizations lacked standing to challenge regulations jointly issued by the U.S. Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce, regarding the geographic area to which a particular section of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 applied. The case arose over issues of US funding of development projects in Aswan and Mahaweli that could harm endangered species in the affected areas.
Said Lily Henning of the Legal Times:
In [this] decision, hailed by the right and attacked by the left as well as by a broad swath of legal scholars, the Court made clear that plaintiffs must suffer a concrete, discernible injury—not a "conjectural or hypothetical one"—to be able to bring suit in federal court. It, in effect, made it more difficult for plaintiffs to challenge the actions of a government agency when the actions don't directly affect them.[1]
Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia stated that Defenders had failed to satisfy Constitutional requirements for “injury in fact” that would grant standing under the Endangered Species Act. He wrote that the Court rejected the view that the citizen suit provision of the statute conferred upon “all persons an abstract, self-contained, non-instrumental ‘right’ to have the Executive observe the procedures required by law." Rather, he explained, an American citizen plaintiff must have suffered a tangible and particular harm.
Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice David Souter asserted in their concurring opinion that a plane ticket to the affected geographic areas with endangered species in question would have been enough to satisfy the imminent threat of future injury requirement.
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