Laub v. United States Department of the Interior

342 F.3d 1080
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedSeptember 8, 2003
Docket02-15104
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 342 F.3d 1080 (Laub v. United States Department of the Interior) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Laub v. United States Department of the Interior, 342 F.3d 1080 (9th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

OPINION

THOMAS, Circuit Judge.

This appeal presents the question of whether an action under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et seq., against various federal and state government defendants1 challenging a proposed plan for managing the California Bay-Delta water resources is ripe for judicial review before site-specific action is taken. We hold that it is and reverse the district court. Because the record is not sufficient to ascertain wheth[1083]*1083er the State Defendants’ participation in the water management program is sufficiently independent of federal control to escape the requirements of NEPA, we reverse the district court’s determination that certain land and water acquisitions undertaken pursuant to the program did not constitute a federal action, and remand with instructions to permit discovery on this question.

I

At issue in this case is the CALFED Bay-Delta program (CALFED program), a cooperative interagency effort of eighteen State and Federal agencies with management or regulatory responsibilities for California’s San Francisco Bay/ Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Bay-Delta). The Bay-Delta estuary is the largest estuary on the West Coast, including over 738,000 acres in five counties and supplying drinking water for two-thirds of Californians and irrigation water for over seven million acres of highly productive agricultural land. The CALFED program describes itself as “the largest, most complex water management program in the world,” engaged in “the most complex and extensive ecosystem restoration project ever proposed.”

CALFED was formed in summer 1994 when the federal and state governments executed a “Framework Agreement” to establish “a comprehensive program for coordination and communication” in order to advance environmental protection and water supply dependability in the Bay-Delta estuary. In late 1995 and early 1996, the governmental entities executed a “Memorandum of Understanding For Preparation of Environmental Impact Statement/Report” (MOU), in order to “coordinate preparation of a single environmental document that satisfies both NEPA and CEQA.”2 The parties agreed that “the CALFED Bay-Delta Program interagency team will be responsible for preparation of the EIS/EIR under CALFED’s general direction.”

Pursuant to this agreement, in July 2000, CALFED issued a programmatic environmental impact statement/ environmental impact report (EIS/EIR). The EIS/EIR identified a Preferred Program Alternative which, among other actions, would “convert agricultural lands to other uses, including habitat, levee improvements, and water storage.” In August 2000, CALFED certified the EIS/EIR in a Record of Decision (ROD). The ROD stated that it “represents the culmination of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) processes,” and “reflects a final selection of a long-term plan (Preferred Program Alternative) which includes specific actions, to fix the Bay-Delta, describes a strategy for implementing the plan, and identifies complementary actions the CALFED agencies will also pursue.” Attached to the ROD were two agreements entered into by the state and federal governments: the “Implementation Memorandum of Understanding” (IMEU) and the “Environmental Water Account Operating Principles Agreement” (EWA). The EWA is described as “a cooperative management program whose purpose is to provide protection to the fish of the Bay-Delta estuary through environmentally beneficial changes in the operations of the [1084]*1084State Water Project (SWP) and federal Central Valley Project (CVP).” The program’s approach to fish protection “requires the acquisition of alternative sources of project water supply.”

Plaintiffs are individual farmers Don Laub, Debbie Jacobsen, and Ted Sheely, and the California Farm Bureau Federation. In response to the issuance of the CALFED EIS/EIR and ROD, Plaintiffs filed suit in federal district court for the Eastern District of California, alleging that the Defendants failed to follow procedures mandated by NEPA and CEQA when promulgating the CALFED EIS/EIR and ROD. Specifically, Plaintiffs’ theory is that Defendants failed to consider any reasonable alternatives to the proposed conversion of agricultural resources to environmental uses, that they failed to consider the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of projects that will cause significant effects on agricultural resources, and that their analysis of mitigation options is inadequate.

On August 27, 2001, the district court dismissed the CEQA claims against the State Defendants with prejudice based on application of the Eleventh Amendment, a decision that Plaintiffs have not appealed. However, the district court retained jurisdiction over the NEPA claims against the Federal Defendants and invoked the Ex Parte Young doctrine to retain jurisdiction over the individual State Defendants.

On August 29, 2001, the district court granted the Federal Defendants Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction without prejudice, holding that the issuance of EIS/EIR was not a final agency action ripe for review. The court further determined that challenged state site-specific acquisitions of land and water were not federalized under NEPA; thus, the court had no jurisdiction over the State Defendants. The court also denied Plaintiffs’ request for discovery and briefing on the question of the federal government’s level of involvement in the state land and water acquisitions. However, the district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ complaint with leave to amend.

Plaintiffs then moved for reconsideration of the dismissal. In the alternative, Plaintiffs requested that the district court dismiss the entire action without prejudice in order to permit appeal because WMX Technologies, Inc. v. Miller, 104 F.3d 1133, 1136-37 (9th Cir.1997) (en banc) holds that dismissal of a complaint with leave to amend was not an appealable final judgment. On December 11, 2001, the district court denied Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration and granted their request to dismiss the entire action without prejudice and without leave to amend. This timely appeal followed.

II

Ripeness is a question of law we review de novo. Daniel v. County of Santa Barbara, 288 F.3d 375, 380(9th Cir.2002). We review dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction de novo. McGraw v. United States, 281 F.3d 997, 1001 (9th Cir.2002), amended by 298 F.3d 754 (9th Cir.2002). We review a district court’s rulings concerning discovery for an abuse of discretion. Panatronic USA v. AT&T Corp., 287 F.3d 840, 846 (9th Cir.2002).

The district court had jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 & 1361.3 The district court dismissed Plain[1085]*1085tiffs’ action without prejudice. A dismissal of an action without prejudice is a final appealable order. De Tie v. Orange County, 152 F.3d 1109, 1111 (9th Cir.1998); Ash v. Cvetkov,

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Related

Don Laub Debbie Jacobsen Ted Sheely California Farm Bureau Federation v. United States Department of the Interior Gale A. Norton, Secretary, Department of the Interior United States Environmental Protection Agency Marianne Horinko, in Her Official Capacity as Acting Administrator of the U.S. Epa Department of the Army, (Civil Works) Joseph W. Westphal, Dr., in His Official Capacity as Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Donald Evans, in His Official Capacity as Secretary, U.S. Department of Commerce United States Department of Commerce U.S. Department of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman, in Her Official Capacity as Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Peter T. Madsen, Brigadier General, in His Official Capacity as Commander, South Pacific Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Natural Resources Conservation Service Charles Bell, in His Capacity as California State Conservationist, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service National Marine Fisheries Service Rebecca Lent, Dr., Regional Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Stephen Thompson, in His Official Capacity as Manager of California-Nevada Operations of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service United States Bureau of Reclamation Kirk C. Rodgers, in His Official Capacity as Director, Mid-Pacific Region of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Gray Davis, Governor of the State of California California Resources Agency Mary D. Nichols, in Her Official Capacity as Secretary of the California Resources Agency California Environmental Protection Agency Winston Hickox, in His Official Capacity as Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency
342 F.3d 1080 (Ninth Circuit, 2003)

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Bluebook (online)
342 F.3d 1080, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/laub-v-united-states-department-of-the-interior-ca9-2003.