Modernized rules on the Endangered Species Act are officially reinstated after an appeals court decision.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a district court improperly vacated 2019 revisions of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The appeals court says the lower court erred by reversing the regulations without considering whether they were lawful.
“The revisions to the Endangered Species Act protected at risk animals while ensuring farmers could continue feeding America’s families,” American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) President Zippy Duvall said. “This ruling doesn’t bring an end to the debate about modernizing the ESA, but it sends an important message to the 9th Circuit lower courts that their job is to rule based on the law. They can no longer vacate a rule unless they determine it is unlawful.”
It’s an important decision for U.S. farmers and ranchers.
“It reinstates an important and modernized Endangered Species Act that we think is much, much better to protect endangered species but also to ensure that farmers and ranchers are able to do their work,” said Travis Cushman, deputy general counsel for Litigation and Public Policy at AFBF. “It creates a much, much better precedent that forces federal courts to actually do the job of looking at the law before they decide to get rid of it. This is a problem that we’ve faced many times, where groups decide they don’t like the rules that we get done, go to certain courts and get the rules kicked out without the court ever actually looking at the rule and saying is this rule lawful or not?”
But Cushman said the process isn’t over yet.
“There’s going to be two options. The court can either send this back to the agencies to work on, which we think is the appropriate action, or alternatively, the court might try to fix the problem in the first place by looking at the rule itself,” Cushman said. “Hopefully, the court will do the right thing and keep the rule in place for the time being.”