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8 Joule: Duq. Energy & Envtl. L.J. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/joule8 and id is 1 raw text is: 




     Weyerhaeuser  Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service: A New Direction for the
                                  Endangered  Species Act

                                By Harrison Pierre Graydon


       On November   27, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Weyerhaeuser

Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 139 S.Ct. 361 (2018). The unanimous opinion of

the Court was delivered by Chief Justice Roberts. It addressed the interpretation of the

Endangered  Species Act and the issue of whether agency decisions under the ESA are

reviewable by the courts.1


       In Weyerhaeuser, the Court addressed two issues. The first is whether critical habitat

under the Endangered Species Act must be actual habitat of an endangered species; the second is

whether the economic impact of an agency's decision to include a certain tract of land in a

critical habitat designation is reviewable by a federal court. 2


       Under the Endangered  Species Act, the Secretary of the Interior is permitted to list

species as endangered and designate the endangered species' critical habitat.3 In Weyerhaeuser, a

group of landowners in Louisiana challenged the designation of their property as critical habitat

for an endangered species of frog.4 The landowners' primary objection was that their land could

not be critical habitat because it was not actually habitat for the species.' Habitat, according to

the Weyerhaeuser and the other landowning petitioners, refers only to those areas where the

species could currently survive.6




Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 139 S.Ct. 361 (2018).
2Id. at 368.
3 Id. at 364.
4 Id.
5 Id.
6 Id.


1

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