United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (November 2014) |
United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP) | |
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Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Stewart, joined by Brennan, Blackmun; Douglas, Marshall (parts I, II); Burger, White, Rehnquist (parts I, III) |
Concurrence | Blackmun, joined by Brennan |
Concur/dissent | Marshall |
Dissent | Douglas |
Dissent | White, joined by Burger, Rehnquist |
Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
Laws applied | |
Interstate Commerce Act , 15 U.S.C. 7 |
United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U.S. 669 (1973), was a landmark decision of the
Background
Student movement
In the late 1960s,
Within The
Standing
Under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, the federal courts' jurisdiction is limited to "cases...or controversies." Historically, the court has determined that various requirements must be met to comply with the Article III jurisdictional threshold, without which federal courts cannot consider the case and the wrongdoing alleged by the plaintiff goes forward. Those requirements include, among others, "standing to sue". The Constitution does not identify what requirements must be met to ensure standing; the Supreme Court has developed the requirements over time through its case law. Just prior to SCRAP's decision to sue the United States and the ICC, the Supreme Court had, in Sierra Club v. Morton, denied standing to the Sierra Club in its environmental challenge to Disney’s effort (with the support of the Interior and Agriculture Departments) to build a hotel and ski resort in California. SCRAP’s claims of wrongdoing and harm to its members were not directed against a single project but against concrete but less discernible harm throughout the nation, including in the Washington, D.C., area where the students lived and attended law school.
Lower court decisions
Under a special statute governing the ICC, a single
The three-judge panel consisted of Judges
Opinion of the Court
Justice Potter Stewart wrote the opinion in three parts. In Part II (standing to sue), he concluded that the allegations in the complaint demonstrated that the individual members of SCRAP would be injured by the freight rate increase. Although the complaint contained various allegations of harm, Justice Stewart relied almost exclusively on SCRAP's allegation that each of its members "'[u]ses the forest, rivers, streams, mountains, and other natural resources of the Washington Metropolitan area and at his legal residence, for camping, hiking, fishing, sightseeing, and other recreational [and] aesthetic purposes,' and that these uses have been adversely affected by the increased freight rates…." He determined that although "attenuated," SCRAP's members had "alleged a specific and perceptible harm that distinguished them from other citizens who had not used the natural resources that were claimed to be affected." In Part III of the decision, Justice Stewart concluded that at this early stage of the rate increase review process (the suspension stage) the Court had no jurisdiction to issue a preliminary injunction. Although the 2.5 percent rate increase could go into effect (and the harm SCRAP alleged would occur), the ICC retained jurisdiction to further review the increase. The Court also noted the ICC's intention to comply with NEPA's requirements at a later stage in the proceedings.
Blackmun's concurring opinion
Justice Harry Blackmun concluded that "in evaluating whether injunctive relief is warranted, I would not require that the appellees, in their individual capacities prove that they were injured. Rather, I would require only that appellees, as responsible and sincere representatives of environmental interests, show that the environment would be injured in fact and that such injury would be irreparable and substantial."
Marshall's opinion
Justice Thurgood Marshall concurred in Justice Stewart's opinion on standing to sue but also was "convinced there is no lack of judicial power to issue a preliminary injunction against the interim surcharge...." He believed that, "[p]roperly viewed ... the injunction at issue in this case amounts to nothing more than a legitimate effort by the District Court, following the Commission’s refusal to suspend the surcharge, to maintain the status quo pending final determination of the legality of the Commission’s action at the suspension stage in light of the requirements of NEPA." He reasoned that "This Court has consistently adhered to the view that it will find federal courts to have been deprived of their traditional power to stay orders under review only in the face of the clearest evidence of a congressional intent to do so…. No such clear intent is to be found in the Interstate Commerce Act…." The ICC also was not entitled to deference because it had special expertise in environmental matters. Consequently, "the grant of preliminary relief here involves no such interference with the Commission’s initial exercise of its particular expertise.... [And] where does the Interstate Commerce Act make provision for an accounting and 'refund' to the people of our Nation for the irreversible ecological damage that results from a rate increase which discriminates unreasonably against recyclable materials and has been allowed to take effect without compliance with the procedural requirements of NEPA?" Citing Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 316 U.S. at 17, Justice Marshall opined that Congress "knew how to use apt words" if it wanted to deprive the District Court of its historic power to enjoin agency actions to preserve its jurisdiction.
Douglas's dissenting opinion
Justice William O. Douglas supported SCRAP's standing for the same reason the majority opinion did. He also recognized the importance of SCRAP's allegation that its "members suffered environmental and economic injury as a result of the alleged increase, because the increase diminished the total amount of recycling in the United States, and made those products, which were in fact manufactured from waste materials after the rate increase, more expensive in the marketplace." He also examined in detail the relationship between the railroads’ rate increase and the manner in which – recognized by the President's Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency – the basic rate structure and the increase discouraged the still fledgling efforts of state and local governments to recycle. Finally, he would have supported the District Court's reasoning that a preliminary injunction should issue to protect NEPA's purpose and thwart the ICC's "technical maneuvers" to avoid it.
White's dissenting opinion
Justice Byron White would have dismissed the complaint because SCRAP lacked standing to sue: "To me, the alleged injuries are so remote, speculative, and insubstantial in fact that they fail to confer standing." SCRAP's allegation that the rate's effect of "retarding the use of recycled materials, causing further consumption of our forests and natural resources," became, Justice White concluded "no more concrete, real, or substantial when it is added that materials will cost more at the marketplace and that somehow the freight rate increase will increase air pollution." He compared the allegations to those of taxpayers in Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 486–489 (1923), "or allegations that government decisions are offensive to reason or morals." Justice White also expressed his position that “failure of this country’s railroads even in their present anemic condition will guarantee that recyclable materials will stay where they are—far beyond the reach of recycling plants that as a consequence may not be built at all."
Subsequent developments
Effects of the decision
The case was remanded to the District Court. The ICC had effectively incorporated the 2.5% surcharge into a larger rate increase, including on recyclable materials. The ICC also prepared a draft
Beginning in 1975, the
Justice Scalia
In "The Doctrine of Standing as an Essential Element of the Separation of Powers," 17 Suffolk Law Review, 881 (1983), then–United States Court of Appeals Judge Antonin Scalia wrote that "the Court's SCRAP-era willingness to discern breathlessly broad congressional grants of standing will not endure." After becoming a member of the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia sought to further expand the requirements of standing to sue and to limit SCRAP's reach.
In
In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), neither side had included reference to United States v. SCRAP in their briefs before the Supreme Court. Sua sponte, Justice Scalia raised SCRAP during Massachusetts' oral argument. The Court, through Justice John Paul Stevens, concluded that Massachusetts had standing to challenge EPA's failure to propose regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles. In response to Chief Justice John Roberts's dissent concerning SCRAP, Justice Stevens affirmed the decision on standing in U.S. v. SCRAP. Stevens wrote that "Chief Justice Roberts did not, however, disavow [the] portion of Justice Stewart's opinion for the Court," where he expressed his reasoning to support the standing to sue of the law students. Justice Stevens also added that it is "quite wrong" to analogize Massachusetts' allegations of harm to a "lawyer's game."
Chief Justice Roberts' dissenting opinion was devoted largely to standing. With specific reference to United States v. SCRAP, he wrote that, "Over time, SCRAP became emblematic not of the looseness of Article III standing requirements, but of how utterly manipulable they are if not taken seriously as a matter of judicial self-restraint. SCRAP made standing seem a lawyer's game, rather than a fundamental limitation ensuring that courts function as courts and not intrude on the politically accountable branches. Today’s decision is SCRAP for a new generation."
References
- ^ United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures, 412 U.S. 669 (1973) ("SCRAP").
- ^ Neil Thomas Proto, To a High Court: The Tumult and Choices That Led to United States of America v. SCRAP (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2006).
- D.D.C.1972).
- ^ Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures v. United States, 371 F. Supp. 1291 (D.D.C. 1974).
Sources and further reading
- In general, see Neil Thomas Proto, To a High Court: The Tumult and Choices That Led to United States of America v. SCRAP (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2006). The book's appendix includes the student-drafted amended complaint that provided the basis for the Court's decision. See also https://www.toahighcourt.com/, which includes an extensive photo journal of the time period and participants and some relevant law review articles concerning standing to sue.
- On standing to sue, see Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law: Principles and Politics, 3rd ed. (Aspen, 2006), 74, 91.
- On standing and the institutionalization of citizens' enforcement, see Zygmunt Plater, Robert H. Abrams, William Goldfarb, Robert L. Graham, Lisa Heinzerling, and David A. Wirth, Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law, and Society, 3rd ed. (Aspen, 2004), 395, 406–408).
- On justiciability limitations, see Jerome A. Barron, C. Thomas Dienes, Wayne McCormack, and Martin H. Redis, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policy, Cases and Materials, 7th ed. (Matthew Bender, 2006), 1579, 1589On .
- On environmental law, see William H. Rodgers, Jr., Environmental Law Treatise, vols. 1–4, with supplements (Thomson/West, 2006).
- On standing to sue, see Daniel Mandelker, NEPA Law and Litigation, 2nd ed., with supplements (Clark Boardman, 2002), section 4.06.
External links
- Text of United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures, 412 U.S. 669 (1973) is available from: CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio)
- Website for Neil Thomas Proto, To a High Court: The Tumult and Choices That Led to United States of America v. SCRAP, https://www.toahighcourt.com/