WASHINGTON (CN) - Clearing a legal hurdle to a water-diversion project that has been delayed since 2002, the D.C. Circuit tossed a challenge Friday from the state of Missouri.
To bring clean water to more than 80,000 people in North Dakota, the plan at issue involves tapping into the Missouri River with a 45-mile pipeline.
Missouri and the Canadian province of Manitoba have brought multiple challenges to the project over the years, predominantly with a focus on whether the Department of the Interior did enough to study what side effects the project would cause. It was on the heels of a new environmental impact statement in 2016 that Missouri filed its latest recent challenge.
While Manitoba reached a settlement, Missouri pursued its claim that the government failed to consider how drawing billions of gallons of water from the Missouri River would affect downriver states.
The state appealed after a federal judge found that it lacked standing to bring the suit, and a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit agreed on Friday.
Citing precedent, the ruling says states are unable to sue under the parens patriae theory, which otherwise permits a government use litigation as a means of enforcing the legal rights of its citizens.
U.S. Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote the 16-page opinion for the court, saying there is nothing in the Administrative Procedure Act that gives a state the ability to sue under the parens patriae theory.
Congress is able to lift the general bar on states suing in this capacity, Henderson said, but she noted it did not do so in the APA.
Henderson also distinguished this holding from a 1985 case in which Maryland was allowed to bring a Natural Gas Act lawsuit under parens patriae.
"The APA's judicial review provision allows a person to challenge agency action taken under many different statutes," Henderson wrote. "It is not linked to any particular statutory scheme and - unlike the NGA - does not create an inference that the Congress intended a wholesale imprimatur allowing a state as parens patriae to sue the federal government."
The Department of the Interior declined to comment on the opinion.
The Missouri Attorney General's Office did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision.
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Jan. 6 sentences April 19, 2024 -
