WildEarth Guardians v. Salazar

WildEarth Guardians, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club (environmental groups) (plaintiffs) challenged the decision of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) (defendant) to offer certain public lands with coal deposits for lease. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (MLA) provided the secretary of the Department of the Interior (defendant) the power to lease public lands for coal mining. The MLA required only that the leases were subject to a competitive bidding process. Otherwise, the MLA authorized the secretary to promulgate regulations needed to advance the act’s objectives. The secretary enacted regulations conferring authority on the BLM (a bureau of the Department of the Interior) to manage the leasing process on public lands. The regulations provided for two types of competitive bidding, the competitive-regional-leasing process and the leasing-by-application process. The competitive-regional-leasing process applied only in areas designated as coal-production regions. The leasing-by-application process applied in all areas outside coal-production regions or if an emergency need for coal was demonstrated. The BLM established the Powder River Coal Production Region in 1979. In 1990, the BLM decertified the Powder River Basin as a coal-production region. As a result, federal-coal-lease applications for the area were subject to the leasing-by-application process rather than the competitive-regional-leasing process. Coal production increased 242 percent in the period after the Powder River Basin was decertified. In 2005, Antelope, a coal-mining company, filed an application requesting that the BLM offer certain public lands in the Powder River Basin for competitive-lease sale. In 2010, the BLM divided the land into two tracts and offered them separately for lease (West Antelope II tracts). Each tract was offered at competitive sealed-bid sales as part of the leasing-by-application process. The environmental groups challenged the BLM’s decision to offer the West Antelope II tracts for lease by application, arguing that the BLM was required first to recertify the Powder River Basin as a coal-production region.