Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon

Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, 515 U.S. 687 (1995), is a US Supreme Court case, decided by a 6–3 vote, in which the plaintiffs challenged the Interior Department's interpretation of the word "harm" in the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Background.
The Secretary of the Interior and the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service director interpreted the word "harm" in the definition of "take" in Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act to mean an act that actually kills or injures wildlife. Under the statutory language of the Interior Department Regulation, the act may include significant habitat modification or degradation if it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering.
The Interpretation of Section 9(a)(1) of the Endangered Species Act to provide the following protection for endangered species:
The Act does not further define the terms it uses to define "take." The Interior Department regulations that implement the statute, however, define the statutory term "harm":
The plaintiff was Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, which consisted of various landowners, logging companies, and timber workers in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. It brought action against the Secretary of the Interior and the director of Fish and Wildlife Service to challenge the interpretation of the term "take" with regards to the clarification of "harm" in the Endangered Species Act. It argued that the red-cockaded woodpecker ("Leuconotopicus borealis"), an endangered species, and the northern spotted owl ("Strix occidentalis caurina"), a threatened species, had injured them economically by preventing them from conducting commercial business in the forestry industry.
The defendant was the Fish and Wildlife Director, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's interpretation of the Act and his definition of the word "harm".
Issue.
The issue was if the interpretation of the word "harm" under section 9(a)(1) on "takings" of the Endangered Species Act includes habitat modification or destruction when it may kill or injure wildlife.
More generally, the issue was if the statute applies to commercial businesses with the unintended attention directed towards endangered species.
Lower courts.
The District Court found in favor of the Interior Department and found "that Congress intended an expansive interpretation of the word 'take,' an interpretation that encompasses habitat modification." "Palila v. Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources" was also noted as using the Secretary's decision to amend the ESA without using the opportunity to change the definition of "take". Even if it had found the ESA to be "silent or ambiguous," the Secretary's reasonable interpretation of the word "harm" was upheld.
"Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc." set the framework for judicial review to interpret statutes that are considered to be "silent or ambiguous."
The Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Greater Oregon appealed.
The Court of Appeals initially affirmed the judgment of the District Court, but after granting a rehearing, it found in favor of Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Greater Oregon. Invoking the "noscitur a sociis" canon of statutory construction, which holds that a word is known by the company it keeps, the court concluded that "harm", like the other words in the definition of "take", should be read as applying only to the perpetrator's direct application of force against the animal taken.
The Interior Department appealed.
Decision.
Majority opinion.
The Supreme Court held, in a decision by Justice Stevens, that the definition of "harm" can include "significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife." It gave three reasons for that being a reasonable interpretation:
Concurring opinion.
Justice O'Connor stated that significant habitat modification that interferes with "breeding, feeding, and sheltering" behaviors and leads to the injury or death of an animal protected by the Act qualifies as 'harm'. She further discussed proximate causation, which introduced notions of foreseeability. "Harm" applies to significant habitat modification, which foreseeably causes the actual injury or death to the red-cockaded woodpecker and the northern spotted owl, protected by the Act.
Scalia's dissent.
Justice Scalia filed a dissent that included the argument that the regulation falls under "Chevron" deference, introduced by "Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc." Three reasons for the regulation not aligning with the interpretation of the statute were found.
The dissent also includes the principle of "noscitur a sociis", interpreting a list of words that share the same attribute just because the most of the words share an attribute. The word "harm" is the only word that does not include a direct action to injure or kill endangered species.
Legacy.
The decision is significant because it demonstrated that "agencies cannot use cost as an excuse" for not complying with section 7(a)(2). Additionally, the court's ruling of the case falls under the "Secretary's definition of 'harm' within the Section 9 taking provision."
In "Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill", the major issue concerned the completion of a dam after discovering the critical habitat of the snail darter. The ESA was amended in 1978 to include the Endangered Species Committee, known as the "God Committee," to provide exemptions to section 7. It denied an exemption, but a rider to a military appropriations bill exempted the Tellico Dam from the ESA.
The case demonstrated the significance of habitat modification under the ESA and is the first case that defined the word "harm" under the definition of "take", which applies to actions that have direct contact, minimal, or unforeseeable effects to endangered species. The definition of "harm’' includes changes in habitat that affect endangered species.