The California Coastal Commission today filed its brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case about the Navy’s use of mid-frequencyactive (MFA) sonar in training exercises off the California coast, Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., No. 07-1239. The issue in the case is whether the Ninth Circuit properly granted aninjunction under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42U.S.C. § 4321, the law that requires federal agencies to consider theenvironmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonablealternatives to those actions. The CCC’s brief summarizes its argument:
According to the Navy’s own assessment, its training exercises “will cause widespread harm to nearly thirty species of marine mammals, including five species of endangered species, and may cause permanent death or injury.” App. 163a. Congress in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), however, authorized the Secretary of Defense to exempt certain military activities from the MMPA despite their impact on marine mammals. 16 U.S.C. § 1371(f). One might reasonably expect that Congress, before allowing the Navy to implement this dramatic action, would demand full compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because that would insure that the Navy’s implementation of the Secretary’s decision to jeopardize marine mammals would be fully informed. As this brief demonstrates, Congress did not excuse the Navy from compliance with NEPA, and the district court must retain equitable discretion to protect NEPA’s important public policy of analyzing the environmental consequences of actions before they occur.
Download the brief here. Earlier briefs in the case, including an amicus brief we filed on behalf of nine retired Admirals and several military support groups, are posted here.