Citations
- 208 F. Supp. 3d 142
Full opinion text
MEMORANDUM OPINION
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON, United States District Judge
The question of who can speak for the animals has long vexed federal judges in animal-welfare cases. As a general matter, courts have concluded that well-established principles of Article III standing permit “human beings [to] invoke then-own injuries in fact to challenge harms done to animals[,]” Cass R. Sunstein, Standing For Animals (With Notes On Animal Rights), 47 UCLA L. Rev. 1333, 1343 (2000), but it can be “exceptionally confusing” to apply settled standing doctrine to determine when and under what circumstances an act that is allegedly harmful to animals works a cognizable injury in fact to human plaintiffs, id. at 1334. In the instant case, a consortium of organizations and individuals led by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (“NEAVS”), a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to animal-welfare issues, has claimed the right to file a lawsuit against the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) and its Director Daniel Ashe (collectively, “Defendants”) to seek to enjoin the agency’s grant of a certain wildlife export permit.
Specifically, Plaintiffs object to FWS’s decision to permit Intervenor-Defendant Yerkes National Primate Research Center (‘Yerkes”) to transfer eight of its chimpanzees to a zoo in the United Kingdom; the agency has authorized this act of exportation pursuant to Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”), 16 U.S.C. §§ 1531-1544, on the condition that Yerkes commit to donating money to an unrelated non-governmental organization that purportedly will use the funds for a chimpanzee conservation program. Plaintiffs complain, inter alia, that the agency’s decision to issue an export permit under these circumstances violates certain fundamental tenets of the ESA, the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §§ 551-559, 701-706, the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4370h, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (“CITES”), 27 U.S.T. 1087 (Mar. 3, 1973). (See Am. Compl. (“Compl.”), ECF No. 6, ¶¶ 145-161.)) Among Plaintiffs’ myriad objections to this particular permit arrangement is their contention that the plain language of the ESA prohibits FWS from establishing this sort of ‘pay-to-play’ export permitting scheme, which, Plaintiffs say, at best inures to the benefit of endangered species only indirectly. (See id. ¶ 4 (asserting that Section 10 of the ESA “requires that the permitted activity itself ‘enhance the survival’ of the chimpanzee species” (emphasis in original)).) Plaintiffs also contend, inter alia, that FWS purportedly failed “to consider the adverse impacts of its decision on efforts to conserve chimpanzees in the wild,” and “to consider the precedential effect its decision will have on the disposition of other captive ehimpanzees[.]” (Id. ¶ 5.)
Before this Court at present are three partial cross-motions for summary judgment that Plaintiffs, FWS, and Yerkes have now filed. (See Pis.’ Mot. for Partial Summ. J. (“Pis.’ Mot”), ECF No. 39; Defs.’ Mot. for Partial Summ. J. (“Defs.’ Mot.”), ECF No. 44; Def.-Intervenor’s Cross-Mot. for Summ. J. (‘Yerkes’s Mot.”), ECF No. 42). Plaintiffs focus primarily on the alleged harm to the chimpanzees at issue (Plaintiffs believe they would be far better off if they were sent to a sanctuary within the United States rather than “an unaccredited zoo” overseas (Pis.’ Mem. in Supp. of Pis.’ Mot. (“Pis.’ Mem.”), ECF No. 39-1, at 9)), and they suggest that FWS’s export-permit decision not only violates the ESA but also injures endangered species as a whole because, in Plaintiffs’ view, it was “Congress’s stated intention to limit substantially the number of exemptions that may be granted” under Section 10 of the ESA, and that intent is “completely eviscerated by allowing applicants to simply buy Section 10 permits by promising to contribute money to someone else” (id. at 32 (emphasis altered) (citation omitted)). Plaintiffs also argue that the permit hurts NEAVS in various ways, including “mak[ing] it impossible for NEAVS to advocate for the release of these ... chimpanzees to a U.S. sanctuary” (id. at 49-50 (citation omitted)), and that three of the individual plaintiffs—all of whom are former Yerkes employees who allegedly have formed “strong emotional bonds with these animals” (id. at 50 (citations omitted))—will suffer too if these chimpanzees are exported to England. For their part, FWS and Yerkes defend the agency’s decision to issue the export permit on the merits, asserting that Section 10(a) is a “broad grant of discretion” that “allows for and does not preclude enhancement [of the species] by indirect means.” (Defs.’ Mem. in Supp. of Defs.’ Mot. (“Defs.’ Mem.”), ECF No. 44-1, at 30-31; see also Yerkes’s Mot. at 23-35.) Defendants also maintain that this Court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over the instant action as a threshold matter, because, in their view, none of the plaintiffs have Article III standing to seek a court order setting aside the permit. (Defs.’ Mem. at 20-30.)
For the reasons explained fully below, this Court finds that Defendants have the better of the standing dispute. Despite the fact that Plaintiffs have presented a series of persuasive arguments regarding the meaning of the ESA and the extent to which FWS’s interpretation undermines the goals and purposes of that statute, recent D.C. Circuit case law compels this Court to conclude that Article III requires something more than a potentially meritorious challenge to imprudent government action involving endangered animals: Plaintiffs themselves must have a concrete and particularized injury in fact that is actual or imminent, that is fairly traceable to Defendants’ actions, and that a federal court’s decision can redress. This Court concludes that Plaintiffs have not satisfied these threshold requirements under binding law regarding Article III standing in animal-welfare and environmental-law cases, and therefore, the Court is constrained to refrain from passing on the merits of Plaintiffs’ arguments or granting them the relief they seek. See Scenic Am., Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp., No. 14-5195, 836 F.Supp.3d 42, 48, 2016 WL 4608153, at *3 (D.C.Cir. Sept. 6, 2016) (“Observing our Article III limitations is ... always important, and particularly so in a case such as this, where we are asked to invalidate an action of the Executive branch.”). Consequently, Defendants’ and Yerkes’s partial motions for summary judgment must be GRANTED, Plaintiffs’ partial motion for summary judgment must be DENIED, and the claims at issue herein must be dismissed. A separate order consistent with this Memorandum Opinion shall issue.
I. BACKGROUND
A. The Listing Of Chimpanzees As Endangered Species Under The ESA
The ESA has been called “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species ever enacted by any nation.” Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Cmtys. for a Great Or., 515 U.S. 687, 698, 115 S.Ct. 2407, 132 L.Ed.2d 597 (1995) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The statute aims to conserve the populations and habitats of certain species, see 16 U.S.C. § 1531(b), and it accomplishes this by, among other things, authorizing the Department of the Interior to determine if a species is “endangered[,]” because it is “in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range[,]” id. § 1532(6), or is “threatened[,]” insofar as it is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future!,]” id. § 1532(20). See also id. § 1533(a). “The Department of the Interi- or administers the ESA for non-marine species and has delegated to the Fish and Wildlife Service (an agency within the Interior Department) the authority to list such species as ‘endangered’ or ‘threatened’ through rulemaking.” Otay Mesa Prop., L.P. v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, 144 F.Supp.3d 35, 40 (D.D.C.2015) (citing, inter alia, 50 C.F.R. § 402.01 (2015)).
FWS has listed chimpanzees as a protected animal species for ESA purposes since 1976. See Determination of 26 Species of Primates as Endangered or Threatened Species, 41 Fed. Reg. 45990, 45990 (Oct. 19, 1976); Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Listing All Chimpanzees as Endangered Species (“Chimpanzee Final Rule”), 80 Fed. Reg. 34500, 34500 (June 16, 2015). Beginning in 1990, the agency “[s]plit-[l]ist[ed]” chimpanzees (Pis.’ Mem. at 13) based upon whether the animals at issue were wild or captive; wild chimpanzees were considered endangered, and captive chimpanzees were deemed threatened. See Chimpanzee Final Rule, 80 Fed. Reg. at 34500. Under the ESA, these different designations resulted in the application of different constraints on public and private actions that might impact the species. Compare 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a)(1) (banning a host of activities only with respect to endangered species), with id. § 1533(d) (authorizing—but not requiring—the Executive to apply the protections found in § 1538(a)(1) to “any threatened species” via regulation).
In 2015, after years of intensive lobbying by animal-welfare organizations, FWS eliminated the dichotomy between wild and captive chimpanzees, deeming all chimpanzees “endangered” within the meaning of the ESA. (Pis.’ Mem. at 13-14; Defs.’ Mem. at 13); see also Chimpanzee Final Rule, 80 Fed. Reg. at 34500. For present purposes, this designation was particularly consequential because Section 9 of the ESA categorically prohibits the export of endangered species, among other things. See 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a)(1)(A) (providing that, “with respect to any endangered species of fish or wildlife” that has been listed as such, “it is unlawful for any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” to “export any such species from the United States”). But this export proscription is also subject to certain specified exceptions: Section 10 (titled “Exceptions”) establishes the circumstances under which the Secretary is authorized to permit the activities that Section 9 prohibits. See 16 U.S.C. § 1539.
In pertinent part, the text of Section 10(a)(1) reads, as follows:
(a) Permits.
(1) The Secretary may permit, under such terms and conditions as he shall prescribe—
(A) any act otherwise prohibited by [Section 9] for scientific purposes or to enhance the propagation or survival of the affected species, including but not limited to, acts necessary for the establishment and maintenance of experimental populations!.]
16 U.S.C. § 1539(a)(1)(A) (emphasis added). Under Section 10(c), the Secretary is required to “publish notice in the Federal Register of each application for an exemption or permit which is made under this section!.]” Id. § 1539(c). And Section 10(c) mandates both that the Secretary’s notice must “invite the submission from interested parties, within thirty days after the date of the notice, of written data, views, or arguments with respect to the application!;,]” and also that “[information received by the Secretary as a part of any application shall be available to the public as a matter of public record at every stage of the proceeding.” Id. In addition, pursuant to Section 10(d), FWS may not grant a permit to authorize otherwise-prohibited acts with respect to endangered species unless it publishes in the Federal Register a finding that the “exceptions were applied for in good faith,” that they “will not operate to the disadvantage of [the] endangered species,” and that issuing the permit “will be consistent with the purposes and policy” of the ESA. Id. § 1539(d).
B. FWS’s Approval Of Yerkes’s Export-Permit Application
On June 12, 2015, Yerkes—a research laboratory associated with Emory University (Yerkes’s Mot. at 36)—requested that FWS grant it permission under CITES to export eight chimpanzees that Yerkes owns to the Wingham Wildlife Park (“Wingham”) in England. (See CITES Permit Application, AR 000012.) Yerkes’s staff had purportedly “spent significant time” in 2013 and 2014 “conducting an extensive due diligence review of Wing-ham’s facility, staff, mission, and plans,” including site visits (id. at 15 (citation omitted)), and in December of 2014, Yerkes “signed an agreement to donate to Wingham eight chimpanzees, all of which were bred and born at [Yerkes’s] facilities” (id. (citation omitted)). When FWS decided (in June of 2015) to list captive chimpanzees as an endangered species, Yerkes was forced to have to seek an exemption from Section 9’s export prohibition in order to execute the Wingham agreement. (See id. at 17 (explaining that Yerkes amended its CITES permit request “to include a request for a permit under the ESA following the ‘uplisting’ of captive chimpanzees to endangered status” (citation omitted))).
After Yerkes finished supplementing its application to include the ESA permit request, FWS published the required Section 10(c) notice. See Endangered Species; Wild Bird Conservation; Marine Mammals; Receipt of Applications for Permit (“Original 10(c) Notice”), 80 Fed. Reg. 62089, 62091 (Oct. 15, 2015). According to documents in the record, Yerkes originally hoped to satisfy Section 10(a) by making financial commitments to two organizations that conduct “programs that focus on benefits to wild populations of chimpanzees.” (Supplement to Yerkes Permit Request, AR 000257.) One of those organizations apparently opposed Yerkes’s attempted export and rejected its donation once that organization discovered the full import of the action (see Letter from Kibale Chimpanzee Project to Wingham, AR 000355-57); the record is less pellucid with respect to the second, but it appears that organization also “withdrew its interest in receiving the donation.” (Decl. of R. Paul Johnson (“Johnson Decl.”), Ex. C. to Yerkes’s Mot., ECF No. 42-9, ¶ 20.) Many other conservation groups and conservationists—including Plaintiffs—also objected. (See Pis.’ Mem. at 16-20.)
Then, on November 27, 2015, FWS informed NEAVS that (1) “there ha[d] been a shift in the organization and amount” of Yerkes’s donation—Yerkes would now donate “$45,000 per year for five years to the Population & Sustainability Network [(“PSN”),]” and (2) the export permit would be granted to Yerkes within ten days. (FWS Email to NEAVS, AR 001359-60.) Three days later, Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against FWS that challenged the permitting decision (see Pis.’ Mem. at 22), and raised essentially the same claims that are before this Court at present, see Compl. ¶¶ 84-95, New England Anti-Vivisection Soc’y v. Jewell, No. 15-cv-2067 (D.D.C. filed Nov. 30, 2015), ECF No. 1. Because the recipient shift occurred after the relevant comment period had closed, see Original 10(c) Notice, 80 Fed. Reg. at 62089, FWS elected to reopen the comment period “to allow the public the opportunity to review additional information submitted for the issuance of [the] per-mití,]” Endangered Species; Receipt of Application for Permit, 81 Fed. Reg. 3452, 3452 (Jan. 21, 2016), and, as a result, Plaintiffs dismissed that other case (see Compl. ¶ 96). The new comment period subsequently closed, and FWS again decided (over strenuous objection from Plaintiffs and others (see Pis.’ Mem. at 22-28) to grant the permit (see Issued Permit, AR 049927-35).
FWS made a number of findings in connection with its decision to issue the export permit to Yerkes. (See, e.g., Enhancement Finding, AR 049912-14; NEPA Statement, AR 049915-18; Section 10(d) Finding, AR 049919-20.) The agency explained, for example, that it viewed Yerkes’s application as “an application ... for the exportation of [the chimpanzees] for the purpose of enhancing the survival of the species in the wild.” (Enhancement Finding, AR 049912.) Moreover, and significantly for present purposes, FWS specifically found that “this action [would] enhance the survival of the species” (id. AR 049914) not because the permitted action itself (i.e., sending these chimpanzees to Wingham) would accomplish this result, but because of the donation to PSN, which is a United Kingdom-based English non-governmental organization that “works at the intersection of sustainability, human health, and population dynamics to conserve biodiversity around the world” (id. AR 049912; see also Section 10(d) Finding, AR 049920 (“[FWS] determined that the export of the chimpanzees would enhance the propagation or survival of the species’.”)). FWS explained that PSN had promised to use the funds to “initiate] a new ... program specifically focused on how [the above-described] factors can be addressed to ameliorate current risks, such as habitat destruction and disease, which face wild chimpanzees in East Africa.” (Enhancement Finding, AR 049912.) FWS also proceeded to find that the export-permit process complied with Section 10(d)’s requirement that the permit was applied for in good faith and would not “operate to the disadvantage of chimpanzees within [their] natural range.” (Section 10(d) Finding, AR 049920.)
The agency published notice of the Section 10(d) finding in the Federal Register on May 5, 2016. See Endangered Species; Marine Mammals; Emergency Exemption; Issuance of Permits, 81 Fed. Reg. 27170, 27170 (May 5, 2016).
C. Procedural History
Meanwhile, on January 29, 2016—during the pendency of the second comment period related to Yerkes’s permit application— NEAVS filed a single-issue complaint in this Court, alleging that FWS had violated the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552 et seq., because it “ha[d] failed in a timely ma[nn]er to release all of the information to which NEAVS [was] entitled” pursuant to two FOIA requests the organization had made in late 2015. (Compl. (“Original Compl.”), ECF No. 1, ¶¶ 1, 34.) After the second comment period closed and FWS made its final decision to grant Yerkes’s export-permit application, NEAVS amended its complaint to add five other animal-rights organizations, four individuals, and “Georgia,” one of the affected chimpanzees. (See generally Compl.).
The amended complaint also attacked the agency’s permitting decision on several additional grounds. (See id. ¶¶ 145-61.) In brief, Plaintiffs claimed that (1) FWS’s actions were not in accordance with the ESA and its implementing regulations, and thus violated the APA (see id. ¶¶ 145-53 (Count I)); (2) FWS had transgressed Article III of CITES (see id. ¶¶ 154-55 (Count II)); .(3) FWS had failed to comply with certain NEPA assessment-related requirements (see id. ¶¶ 156-57 (Count III)); and (4) FWS’s permitting officer and other agency officials had acted in various inappropriate ways that amounted to arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking in violation of the APA’s bedrock principles (see id. ¶¶ 158-61 (Count IV)). The amended complaint also persisted with the aforementioned FOIA claim. (See id. ¶ 162 (Count V).)
On April 27, 2016, Yerkes requested permission from this Court to intervene in this lawsuit as a defendant (see Consent Mot. to Intervene, ECF No. 9); the Court granted Yerkes’s request on April 29, 2016 (see Mem. Op. & Order, ECF No. 15). Thereafter, Plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that sought to enjoin execution of the permitted activity pending final resolution of the case. (See Pis.’ Mot. for Preliminary Injunction (“P.I.”), ECF No. 18, at 1.) This Court held a hearing on Plaintiffs’ P.I. motion on May 24, 2016 (see Order, ECF No. 27), after which the Court denied the motion as moot in light of Yerkes’s agreement to suspend its transfer of the chimpanzees voluntarily in order to permit the matter to be briefed as cross-motions for summary judgment and decided with the benefit of a full administrative record (see id. at 1).
Plaintiffs filed their cross-motion for summary judgment on July 8, 2016. In their memorandum in support of the motion, Plaintiffs home in on a subset of the claims in their wide-ranging complaint. For example, Plaintiffs specifically argue that Section 10 of the ESA does not authorize FWS’s permitting decision, insofar as that section requires (and FWS failed to find) that the permitted act itself enhance the propagation or survival of the species. (See Pis.’ Mem. at 29-33.) Additionally, Plaintiffs assert that, even if the ESA permits FWS’s interpretation, FWS unlawfully delegated its duty to make the enhancement finding to a third party (see id. at 33-36); that the grant of the permit somehow violates the consultation requirement in Section 7(a) of the ESA (see id. at 45 n.34); and that FWS failed to comply with the APA’s mandate regarding reasoned decisionmaking because the agency improperly disregarded certain public comments (see id. at 36-38). Plaintiffs also contend that the NEPA’s requirement that the agency conduct an environmental impact assessment and produce the corresponding statement applied to the permit determination, because the categorical exclusion is inapplicable, either on its own terms or because extraordinary circumstances apply. (Id. at 38-45.)
Defendants’ cross-motion for summary judgment, which was filed August 4, 2016, not only challenges Plaintiffs’ claims on the merits, it also contends that this Court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction because Plaintiffs lack Article III standing to maintain this lawsuit. (See generally Defs.’ Mem.) In this regard, Defendants assert that the informational, organizational, and aesthetic injuries upon which Plaintiffs rely for standing (discussed at length in Part III) do not constitute actual or imminent injuries in fact (see id. at 19-30). Yerkes spends most of its cross-motion memorandum attempting to defend the rationality of FWS’s conclusion that a sizable monetary donation to an organization that supports (human) family planning and reproductive health services will benefit chimpanzees as a species (see, e.g., Yerkes’s Mot. at 24-25, 36-41), but Yerkes also generally agrees with Defendants that, in any event, Plaintiffs have failed to assert an injury in fact that FWS’s action caused and that will likely be remedied if Plaintiffs prevail (see id. at 49-54).
II. LEGAL STANDARDS
As noted above, Plaintiffs’ complaint asks this Court to set aside FWS’s decision to issue an export permit to Yerkes on a variety of grounds. (See Compl. ¶¶ 145-161.) The motions at issue here are styled as motions for summary judgment under Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; however, “in cases involving review of a final agency actionf,] • • • the standard set forth in [Rule 56] does not apply because of the limited role of a court in reviewing the administrative record.” Otsuka Pharm. Co. v. Burwell, No. 15-1688, 2016 WL 4098740, at *6 (D.D.C. July 28, 2016) (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Rather, the Court “act[s] as an appellate tribunal[.]” XP Vehicles, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Energy, 156 F.Supp.3d 185, 191 (D.D.C.2016) (first alteration in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Thus—assuming the court has jurisdiction to review the claims brought in the case—the court’s function is “solely ‘to determine whether or not as a matter of law the evidence in the administrative record permitted the agency to make the decision it did.’ ” Otsuka Pharm., 2016 WL 4098740, at *6 (quoting ViroPharma, Inc. v. Hamburg, 916 F.Supp.2d 76, 79 (D.D.C.2013)). That task includes ensuring that the agency action was not “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law[.]” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).
As always, however, before the court can render a decision on the merits of a plaintiffs challenge to agency action, it must first satisfy itself that it has jurisdiction over the plaintiffs claims because the plaintiff who seeks the court’s assistance meets the “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing!.]” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 167, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Scenic Am., 836 F.Supp.3d at 47-49, 2016 WL 4608153, at *3-4. Standing doctrine “helps preserve the Constitution’s separation of powers and demarcates ‘the proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society!,]’ ” Coal. for Mercury-Free Drugs v. Sebelius, 671 F.3d 1275, 1279 (D.C.Cir. 2012) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975)), and thus, must not be viewed as a “troublesome hurdle to be overcome if possible so as to reach the ‘merits’ of a lawsuit which a party desires to have adjudicated!,]” Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 476, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982). Pursuant to our Constitution, the role of the federal courts “is to redress or prevent actual or imminently threatened injury to persons caused by private or official violation of law[,]” and “[e]xcept when necessary in the execution of that function, courts have no charter to review and revise legislative and executive action.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492, 129 S.Ct. 1142, 173 L.Ed.2d 1 (2009) (citation omitted). Accordingly, and as a general matter, the threshold inquiry for any federal court is whether the plaintiff has alleged, and ultimately proven, “such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to warrant [the] invocation of federal-court jurisdiction.” Id. at 493, 129 S.Ct. 1142 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); cf. Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Room Where It Happens, on Hamilton (Atlantic Records 2015) (“[Y]ou don’t get a win unless you play in the game.”).
The three essential elements of Article III standing are by now well established. The Constitution requires:
(1) that the plaintiff have suffered an “injury in fact”—an invasion of a judicially cognizable interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) that there be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury must be fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some third party not before the court; and (3) that it be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.
Bennett, 520 U.S. at 167, 117 S.Ct. 1154 (citation omitted). It is axiomatic that the party that invokes federal jurisdiction has the burden of establishing these elements, and as relevant here, it is also clear that, “at the summary judgment stage, such a party can no longer rest on mere allegations, but must set forth by affidavit or other evidence specific facts” that support his claim of injury, causation, and redress-ability. Fed. Forest Res. Coal. v. Vilsack, 100 F.Supp.3d 21, 34 (D.D.C.2015) (quoting Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, — U.S. -, 133 S.Ct. 1138, 1148-49, 185 L.Ed.2d 264 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Bennett, 520 U.S. at 168, 117 S.Ct. 1154 (noting that, at summary judgment, the motion-to-dismiss practice of “presum[ing] that general allegations embrace those specific facts that are necessary to support the claim” no longer applies (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).
Furthermore, when it evaluates whether or not a plaintiff has Article III standing, the court must not “decide ... for or against the plaintiff’ on the merits of his claims, In re Navy Chaplaincy, 534 F.3d 756, 760 (D.C.Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); rather, the court must “assume that on the merits the plaintiffs would be successful in their claims.” Id. (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370, 377 (D.C.Cir.2007). And while standing is not entirely precluded if “the plaintiff is not himself the object of the government action or inaction he challenges,” there is no question that “it is ordinarily substantially more difficult to establish.” Fed. Forest Res. Coal, 100 F.Supp.3d at 34 (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 562, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Food & Water Watch v. Vilsack, 808 F.3d 905, 914 (D.C.Cir.2015).
III. ANALYSIS
This case begins and ends with the Article III standing inquiry. Plaintiffs insist that they are entitled to bring this challenge to the export permit that FWS has granted to Yerkes because they have suffered (or imminently will suffer) various injuries in fact as a result of this permitting decision. To support this contention, which is essential to establishing standing and thus this Court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, Plaintiffs offer three separate theories of injury: (1) that all of the plaintiffs have suffered an “informational” injury, because FWS failed to collect and provide information about the nature and scope of the PSN project prior to authorizing the export (see Pis.’ Mem. at 46-48); (2) that NEAVS’s organizational interests will be injured (i.e., it has “organizational” standing), because the permit runs contrary to NEAVS’s goals and it will spend money in response (see id. at 48-50); and (3) that some of the plaintiffs (three of the individuals) have suffered or soon will suffer an “aesthetic” injury based on their personal concern for the particular chimpanzees at issue (see id. at 50-53). Unfortunately for Plaintiffs, each of these standing theories founders under existing precedents that bind this Court, and thus, the Court is compelled to conclude that no plaintiff has demonstrated a concrete or particularized injury in fact that is actual or imminent, as explained below.
A. Plaintiffs Have Not Demonstrated That They Have A Cognizable Informational Injuiy
An informational, injury can occur when a plaintiff is deprived of information that a statute entitles him to have. See Zivotofsky v. Sec’y of State, 444 F.3d 614, 618 (D.C.Cir.2006) (“Any[] [FOIA requester] whose request for specific information has been denied has standing to bring an action .... The requester is injured-in-fact for standing purposes because he did not get what the statute entitled him to receive.” (some citations omitted) (citing, inter alia, FEC v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 23-25, 118 S.Ct. 1777, 141 L.Ed.2d 10 (1998)); see also Am. Farm Bureau v. E.P.A., 121 F.Supp.2d 84, 97 (D.D.C.2000) (explaining that “[ijnformational standing arises ‘only in very specific statutory contexts’ where a statutory provision has ‘explicitly created a right to information’ ” (quoting Animal Legal Def. Fund, Inc. v. Espy, 23 F.3d 496, 502 (D.C.Cir.1994))). Under such circumstances, which are “exceedingly limited” as a practical matter, Food & Water Watch v. Vilsack, 79 F.Supp.3d 174, 197 (D.D.C. 2015), aff'd, 808 F.3d 905 (D.C.Cir.2015), an alleged informational injury can provide the necessary injury in fact to support Article III standing. The necessary circumstances do not exist in this case.
1. Section 10(c) Does Not Require FWS To Collect And Disclose Information Beyond That Which Is Submitted To The Agency In Support Of A Permit Application
As the D.C. Circuit recently explained, “[a] plaintiff suffers sufficiently concrete and particularized informational injury where the plaintiff alleges that: (1) it has been deprived of information that, on its interpretation, a statute requires the government or a third party to disclose to it, and (2) it suffers, by being denied access to that information, the type of harm Congress sought to prevent by requiring disclosure.” Friends of Animals v. Jewell (“Friends of Animals II”), 828 F.3d 989, 992, 2016 WL 3854010, at *3 (D.C.Cir. 2016) (citation omitted). Importantly, it is well established that “the existence and scope of an injury for informational standing purposes is defined by Congress[.]” Id. at 992, at *2 (emphasis added) (citation omitted); cf. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 514, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (“Congress may create a statutory right or entitlement the alleged deprivation of which can confer standing to sue even where the plaintiff would have suffered no judicially cognizable injury in the absence of statute.” (citation omitted)). Consequently, a “plaintiff seeking to demonstrate that it has informational standing generally need not allege any additional harm beyond the one Congress has identified.” Friends of Animals II, 828 F.3d at 992, 2016 WL 3854010, at *2 (emphasis omitted) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Zivotofsky, 444 F.3d at 617 (explaining that “[a]nyone whose request for specific information has been denied has standing to bring an action; the requester’s circumstances—why he wants the information, what he plans to do with it, what harm he suffered from the failure to disclose—are irrelevant to standing” (citation omitted)).
Here, Plaintiffs assert that they have suffered informational injury “because the FWS’s failure to collect the information necessary to conclude that the authorized export will ‘enhance the survival’ of the chimpanzee species, and its decision to instead allow PSN, Yerkes, and Wingham to make this determination ... [,] violated the Plaintiffs’ right to receive and comment on such information before the FWS made the decision at issue, as required by Section 10(c)[.]” (Pis.’ Mem. at 46 (emphasis in original).) Pursuant to the above-cited cases, Plaintiffs might well have had a viable contention that they were injured by this alleged deprivation of relevant information that the agency failed to collect, but only if Section 10(c) actually does require the agency “to collect the information necessary to conclude that the authorized export will ‘enhance the survival’ of the ... species” (id.), and this Court sees no such affirmative-collection requirement in that statutory provision. Indeed, the plain text of the disclosure requirement in Section 10(c) is far more limited; as relevant here, it provides only that “[information received by the Secretary as a part of any application [for a permit] shall be available to the public as a matter of public record at every stage of the proceeding.” 16 U.S.C. § 1539(c) (emphasis added). By its terms, then, Section 10(c) “creates a “right to information[,]” Friends of Animals v. Jewell (Friends of Animals I), 824 F.3d 1033, 1041 (D.C.Cir.2016), but that right extends only to the information that the agency receives in connection with a permit application, and Congress did not impose any duty to make an affirmative effort to collect certain information as part of the permitting process, which is the failure that Plaintiffs contend has injured them. Consequently, Plaintiffs’ alleged informational injury—i.e., that they did not receive information that FWS failed to collect (where the disclosure provision upon which Plaintiffs rely to support this assertion does not require the collection of such information)—is not a cognizable injury for standing purposes.
The D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in Friends of Animals II makes clear why this is so. That case involved Section 4(b) of the ESA, which authorizes petitions to the Secretary of the Interior to request that a species be added or removed from the endangered or threatened species lists. See 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(A). Under Section 4(b)(3)(A), once petitioned, the agency has 90 days to decide “whether the petition presents substantial ... information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted.” Id. If so, then, within 12 months of receiving the petition, the agency must make one of three potential findings, each of which, when made, triggers a duty on the agency’s part to publish certain finding-specific information in the Federal Register. See Friends of Animals II, 828 F.3d at 990-91, 2016 WL 3854010, at *1 (citing 16 U.S.C. § 1533(b)(3)(B)); see also id. at 993, at *3 (explaining that Congress adopted a “sequential procedural structure” insofar as “[t]he disclosure requirement sets forth what information the [agency] must publish after making a given finding” (emphasis in original)). The Friends of Animals II plaintiff was a nonprofit organization that contended the agency had blown through the 12-month deadline for making findings, see id. at 991-92, 993-94, at *2, *4, and claimed informational standing to enforce the findings requirement on the grounds that, insofar as meeting the deadline for making findings triggered a disclosure requirement, the Secretary’s failure to meet the deadline deprived them of the information to which they would be entitled, see id. at 992-94, at *3-4.
The D.C. Circuit rejected this 'informational standing contention. Stated simply, the Circuit focused on “the first part of the [informational standing] inquiry”—i.e., the requirement that the plaintiff be deprived of information that the statute requires produced—and, based on its evaluation of the statutory provisions at issue, concluded that “[t]he disclosure requirement [plaintiff] points to as the source of its informational injury does not impose any obligations on the [agency] until a later time in the listing process.” Id. at 992, at *3. Under the Circuit’s reading, “[t]he structure of section 4(b)(3)(B) makes clear that [the deadline and disclosure] requirements arise sequentially[,]” id., and thus, “Congress placed the Secretary under no obligation to publish any information in the Federal Register until after making a 12-month finding[,]” id. This same analysis plainly supports this Court’s conclusion that the absence of any collection requirement in Section 10(c)’s disclosure provision prevents Plaintiffs from claiming injury as a result of FWS’s failure to undertake any such action.
But there is more. Because the Friends of Animals II plaintiffs apparently recognized that the statutory conditions for the required disclosure of information had not come to pass, the complaint that was filed in that case claimed the only transgression that could plausibly be pled under the circumstances: that the agency had missed the 12-month deadline for making the requisite findings. See id. at 994, at *4 (noting that the plaintiff had called its case “a deadline suit” and that its “complaint seeks to have the court order compliance with section 4(b)(3)(B)’s deadline requirement, not its disclosure requirement” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). The Circuit emphasized, however, that Congress intended for the deadline duty to be a “distinct” obligation of the agency, id. at 993, at *3, and thus, the plaintiff would not be permitted to assert that it had suffered an informational injury (i.e., that its right to information had been violated) based on the agency’s failure to satisfy the deadline for making findings. Indeed, according to the Circuit, the fact that the plaintiffs claim necessarily arose under the deadline provision, as opposed to the disclosure provision, only underscored the conclusion that, per the statute, the agency had no obligation to disclose information until such time as findings were made. See id. at 993, at *4 (“[Plaintiffs] complaint, in other words, demonstrates precisely why it lacks informational injury: before the [agency] makes a 12-month finding, section 4(b)(3)(B) does not mandate the disclosure of any information whatsoever.”).
So it is here. Plaintiffs’ ESA claims challenge FWS’s export-permit decision as an arbitrary-and-capricious contravention of Sections 10(a) and 7(a)(2), rather than as a violation of Section 10(c), presumably precisely because Section 10(c) does not itself require the agency to collect and disclose the information that Plaintiffs assert that Section 10(c) requires the agency to collect and disclose for the purpose of their informational-injury argument. And just as the plaintiff in Friends of Animals II earnestly argued that the statutory provisions in that case must be read “[t]ogether” and interpreted to “confer on it the right to timely information” that could be the basis for the plaintiffs claim of informational injury, id. at 993, at *4 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), so, too, Plaintiffs here insist that the disclosure mandate in Section 10(c) must be read to include a right (i.e., the right to force the agency to make affirmative efforts to collect certain information and disclose it to the public) that appears nowhere in the statute. In short, this Court cannot conclude that Plaintiffs have suffered an informational injury under the circumstances presented here consistently with the D.C. Circuit’s holding in Friends of Animals II because, just as in that case, the statutory provisions at issue here “do[ ] not [themselves] mandate the disclosure of [the] information” that Plaintiffs say was improperly withheld from them. Id. at 990, at*l.
Of course, the absence of any clear statutory requirement that FWS collect the detailed information about the PSN project that Plaintiffs say should have been gathered and disclosed to them pursuant to Section 10(c), raises the question': what is the real source of Plaintiffs’ insistence that they have met the requirements for having an informational injury? The duty to collect information that Plaintiffs read into the statute appears to be grounded, first, in their belief the agency could not make a rational decision about whether the proposed permitting arrangement enhances the survival of the chimpanzee species (as Section 10(a) requires) without collecting detailed information about the PSN project (see Pis.’ Mem. at 46-47), and second, in the fact that agency regulations require applicants for “enhancement” permits to include in the application certain information about the “[l]ocation where the requested permitted activity is to occur or be conducted[,]” 50 C.F.R. § 13.12(a)(2), including (1) a “complete description and address of the institution or other facility where the wildlife sought to be covered by the permit' will be used, displayed, or maintained[,]” id. § 17.22(a)(l)(v); and (2) the “resume of the experience of those personfs] who will be caring for the wildlife” covered by the permit, id. § 17.22(a)(l)(vi); see also id. § 17.22(a)(l)(vii) (requiring a “full statement of the reasons why the applicant is justified in obtaining a permit including the details of the activities sought to be authorized by the permit”). Plaintiffs argue that they “have a statutory right to information that they contend the agency would be required to collect if Plaintiffs are correct on the merits of their claims” (Pis.’ Corrected Mem. in Opp’n to the Cross-Mots. For Partial Summ. J. & Reply in Supp. of Pis.’ Mot. (“Pis.’ Reply”), ECF No. 51-1, at 38 (emphasis altered)), and insist that FWS’s failure to enforce “the agency’s own regulations” (id.) by requiring Yerkes to submit substantial information about the PSN project has injured them (see id. at 41 (maintaining that Plaintiffs are “suffering informational injury because the FWS failed to obtain the information necessary even to consider granting the permit at issue”); see also Pis.’ Mem. at 47 (arguing that FWS “did not require Yerkes to submit any information about where the PSN program will take place ..., who will conduct that program, any of the qualifications of such individuals, or any of the other details of the program[,]” and that Plaintiffs were harmed by this “failure to obtain that required information and make it available to the public” (emphasis in original))).
This line of argument falls short in several respects. First of all, Section 10(a) is not the disclosure provision upon which Plaintiffs’ informational-injury argument rests, so Plaintiffs’ concern that FWS failed to collect information that the agency needed to review in order to make a rational “enhancement” finding has no bearing on Plaintiffs’ informational-injury contention. Second, it is not at all clear that what FWS regulations say about the information that an applicant must submit is responsive to the informational-standing question that is at issue here—i.e., whether and under what circumstances the statute requires the agency to disclose information to the public. Third, and relatedly, the applicable disclosure provision—Section 10(c)—only directs the agency to release information it has “received” in connection with a permit, 16 U.S.C. § 1539(c); it certainly does not purport, either explicitly or implicitly, to entitle anyone to information FWS might have received if the agency (1) had understood the permitting regulations differently, or (2) had reached the conclusion that the information an applicant submitted was insufficient under that different view of the regulatory requirements. In this regard, Plaintiffs appear to have based their informational-injury assertion on a purportedly statute-based “right to information” (Pis.’ Reply at 38) that is much broader than the right that Congress actually has conveyed in the statute upon which Plaintiffs rely.
Finally, even assuming that the regulations establish and define the scope of FWS’s duty to collect information, this Court can find nothing in those regulations that supports a finding that the agency actually breached that collection obligation in the manner Plaintiffs suggest. That is, the regulations expressly and repeatedly require that an applicant submit various pieces of information about “the wildlife sought to be covered by the permití,]” 50 C.F.R. § 17.22(a)(1) (emphasis added), and other than requiring “[a] full statement of the reasons why the applicant is justified in obtaining the permit[,]” id. § 17.22(a)(l)(vii), the regulations do not mandate that the applicant provide specific information pertaining to the manner and extent to which the species will be enhanced if the permit issues. The fact that the regulations do not refer to or require the submission of information relevant to the agency’s enhancement assessment might well support Plaintiffs’ merits argument that the Section 10 permitting scheme does not actually authorize an indirect enhancement arrangement such as the one at issue here. But the lack of any provision of law that requires FWS to collect and distribute the kinds of information that Plaintiffs say they did not receive clearly undermines Plaintiffs’ claims of harm for the purpose of the informational-standing analysis. See Friends of Animals II, 828 F.3d at 993-94, 2016 WL 3854010, at *4; ASPCA v. Feld Entm’t, Inc., 659 F.3d 13, 23-24 (D.C.Cir.2011).
2. Plaintiffs’ Arguments To The Contrary Proceed From A Mistaken Premise And Thus Are Not Persuasive
Undaunted, Plaintiffs invoke “the well-established rule that to determine standing the Court must accept Plaintiffs’ view of the merits.” (Pis.’ Reply at 39.) According to Plaintiffs, this means that the Court is required to accept their view that Section 10(c) confers on them a right to certain information that they say FWS had to, yet failed to, collect. (See id. at 38 (maintaining that “this Court is required to assume” that “Plaintiffs have a statutory right to information that they contend the agency would be required to collect if Plaintiffs are correct on the merits of their claims” (emphasis in original)); see also id. at 42 (expressing the view that Section 10(c)’s “obligation to collect and disclose ... information applies to the entity that will be conducting the activities that the agency has concluded will ‘enhance the survival’ of the species, here PSN” and that, “again, the Court must accept this view of the statute when deciding standing”).) But Plaintiffs are wrong to insist that, just because the Court is required to assume the merits of their claims when conducting the informational-standing analysis, it must also accept their legal argument that Section 10(c) requires the disclosure of information under the circumstances that Plaintiffs envision, for at least two reasons.
To begin with, it does not help Plaintiffs for this Court to assume that the claims they have brought in this case are meritorious, since the claims these plaintiffs press are wholly independent of the Section 10(c) argument they seek to advance for standing purposes. See Friends of Animals II, 828 F.3d at 994, 2016 WL 3854010, at *4 (explaining that a plaintiff whose claim of misconduct arises under a statutory provision that does not require the disclosure of information cannot claim that he is injured on the basis of a distinct (albeit related) disclosure provision because “[a] plaintiff can demonstrate informational injury [only] where it seeks to enforce [statutory] disclosure requirements” (citation omitted)); Feld, 659 F.3d at 23. Second, and perhaps even more important, the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning in Friends of Animals II completely belies any contention that a court’s informational-standing analysis is constrained by a plaintiffs assertion that a particular disclosure provision requires the disclosure of information on the terms the plaintiff dictates. As explained above, the plaintiff in Friends of Animals II specifically argued that the deadline and disclosure provisions of Section 4(b)(3)(B) of the ESA must be read together, and so read, must be construed to “confer on it the right to timely information.” Friends of Animals II, 828 F.3d at 993, 2016 WL 3854010, at *4 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Far from adopting this construction of that statute, the Circuit squarely rejected the plaintiffs interpretation, and it found, instead, that “nothing in the Act or its legislative history indicates that the deadline requirement ... should be read to incorporate the informational purpose of section 4(b)(3)(B)’s disclosure requirement” as a matter of law. Id. at 993, at *4. Notably, nothing about “the well-established rule that ... the Court must accept Plaintiffs’ view of the merits” when determining standing (Pis.’ Reply at 39) compelled the Friends of Animals II panel to ignore the even more venerable and well-settled principle that it is the role of the court to determine the meaning of a statute, see id. at 992-94, at *3-4; cf. Nixon v. Sirica, 487 F.2d 700, 714 (D.C.Cir.1973) (“[I]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” (internal quotation marks and footnote omitted)). And as reflected in Part III.A.1 of the instant Memorandum Opinion, this Court rightly has assumed that same role here.
To be sure, the D.C. Circuit has, at times, asserted that a plaintiffs informational injury is to be evaluated in light of the plaintiffs interpretation of a statute. See, e.g., Friends of Animals I, 824 F.3d at 1040-41 (explaining that “a denial of access to information can work an injury in fact for standing purposes, at least where a statute (on the claimants’ reading) requires that the information be publicly disclosed and there is no reason to doubt their claim that the information would help them” (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Ethyl Corp. v. E.P.A., 306 F.3d 1144, 1148 (D.C.Cir. 2002))); Feld, 659 F.3d at 23 (“To establish [informational] injury, a plaintiff must espouse a view of the law under which the defendant (or an entity it regulates) is obligated to disclose certain information that the plaintiff has a right to obtain.”). But this Court takes this directive to mean that, while it is completely within the province of the court to determine whether and under what circumstances a statutory provision requires the disclosure of information, any dispute about whether such circumstances exist in the case at bar must be decided in plaintiffs favor for standing purposes.
So, for example, in FEC v. Akins, 524 U.S. 11, 118 S.Ct. 1777, 141 L.Ed.2d 10 (1998), the Supreme Court read the statute at issue—the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (“FECA”)—as “imposing] extensive recordkeeping- and disclosure requirements upon groups that fall within the Act’s definition of a ‘political committee[,]’ ” id. at 14, 118 S.Ct. 1777, apparently of its own volition and without even referring to how the plaintiffs had interpreted the statute. In fact, what the FECA said about the circumstances under which disclosures must be made was not disputed; the issue that arose was a statute-based question of a different nature: given that only “political committees” were required to make plaintiffs’ desired disclosures per the statute, the parties debated whether the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (“AIPAC”) qualified as a “political committee” within the meaning of that statute. Id. at 17-18, 118 S.Ct. 1777. It was only when assessing the plaintiffs’ argument that AIPAC was a political committee (and thus that plaintiffs had been deprived of the required disclosures) that the Supreme Court concluded that the plaintiffs’ injury in fact was “their inability to obtain information—lists of AIPAC donors ... and campaign-related contributions and expenditures—that, on [plaintiffs’] view of the law, the statute requires that AI-PAC makes public.” Id. at 21, 118 S.Ct. 1777 (emphasis added); see also Feld, 659 F.3d at 23 (explaining that, in. Akins, “plaintiffs’ contrary view of the law” consisted of its position “that AI-PAC’s activities rendered it a ‘political committee’ ” and therefore, “[w]ere plaintiffs to prevail, AIPAC would have to disclose the information [plaintiffs] sought” (citation omitted)). Thus, for standing purposes, the Supreme Court merely accepted the plaintiffs’ assertion that the statute reached AIPAC’s conduct, see Akins, 524 U.S. at 18, 21, 118 S.Ct. 1777, which, in this Court’s view, says nothing about whether a court is required to accept a plaintiffs threshold legal argument about whether and to what extent a statute requires disclosure at all. Cf. Friends of Animals I, 824 F.3d at 1041 (finding, based on the Court’s own statutory analysis, that Section 10(c) “creates a right to information upon which a claim of informational standing may be predicated”).
D.C. Circuit cases that purport to accept the plaintiffs view of the law while analyzing standing can be read this way as well. See, e.g., Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, 583 F.3d 871, 872-73 (D.C.Cir.2009) (finding “obvious[]” injury in fact to support a claim that the Department of Commerce violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by failing to make disclosures with respect to advisory committees and assuming for standing purposes that certain organizations in question were in fact advisory committees); see also Feld, 659 F.3d at 23 (describing the standing analysis in Judicial Watch as accepting “plaintiffs view of the law” that those organizations were “ ‘advisory committees’ under FACA[,]” thus triggering “ ‘an array of FACA obligations’ to disclose information” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). And when that meaning of the well-established requirement that the court accept the plaintiffs view of the law with respect to the merits of its claims is applied, it is readily apparent that Plaintiffs’ assertion here that this Court must adopt its threshold argument that Section 10(c) is the type of disclosure statute that requires FWS to collect certain information for inclusion in its permit-related files is misguided.
The bottom line is this: just as the D.C. Circuit held that the disclosure provision in Friends of Animals II imposed no disclosure obligation on the Secretary until she had made her deadline finding, this Court finds that Section 10(c) imposes no disclosure obligation with respect to any permit-related information beyond the information that FWS receives as part of the application, and this Court need not accept Plaintiffs’ assertions that Section 10(c) is actually broader than its plain text provides. And because Plaintiffs here do not have any right under Section 10(c) to information that FWS did not receive in connection with Yerkes’s export-permit application, even though they have vigorously argued otherwise, Plaintiffs have not suffered a cognizable informational injury.
B. NEAVS Does Not Have Organizational Standing
Plaintiffs’ second standing theory rests on NEAVS’s contention that FWS’s permit decision will injure that organization because it will harm “NEAVS’[s] ability to carry out one of its key missions[.]” (Pis.’ Mem. at 48.) According to Plaintiffs, NEAVS “is dedicated to ending the use of animals in research, testing!,] and science education!,]” and has been fighting to have captive chimpanzees sent to chimpanzee sanctuaries in the United States for a long time. (Decl. of Theorodafsic] Capaldo (“Ca-paldo Decl.”), Ex. 22 to Pis.’ Mot., ECF No. 39-24, ¶¶1, 3.) NEAVS’s President avers that, “as a direct and immediate result of the unlawfully issued permit” that is being challenged in this case, “NEAVS will be forced to expend more resources attempting to rescue and protect the eight Yerkes chimpanzees that FWS has authorized to be relocated to Wingham!,]” and the increased expenditures allegedly will include the cost of (1) “monitoring what happens to these chimpanzees and their progeny once the chimpanzees are shipped to England,” and (2) “advocat[ing] for the greatest protection possible for these animals under the laws of the United Kingdom!.]” (Id. ¶ 5.) In this Court’s view, recent D.C. Circuit case law confirms that organizational standing requires more than a sincere and strong objection to the challenged government action and a stated intention to use the organization’s resources to oppose it, as explained below. And a review of the record evidence reveals that NEAVS has not demonstrated anything more than that.
1. An Organization That Sues On Its Own Behalf Must Show That The Challenged Action Poses An Actual Or Imminent Threat To Its Ability To Perform Its Activities
Simply stated, an organization is permitted to assert standing on its own behalf, but only if it can demonstrate that it has an “actual or threatened injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the alleged illegal action and likely to be redressed by a favorable court decision.” PETA v. USDA, 797 F.3d 1087, 1093 (D.C.Cir.2015) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 378-79, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982). The difficulty in applying these core principles—see PETA, 797 F.3d at 1099, 1101 (Millet, J., dubitante); Int’l Acad. of Oral Med. & Toxicology v. FDA, No. 14-356, 195 F.Supp.3d 243, 253-54, 2016 WL 3659887, at *6 (D.D.C. July 1, 2016)—arises from the fact that, just as individuals need more than a “special interest” in the subject matter of their lawsuit to have Article III standing, Lujan, 504 U.S. at 563, 112 S.Ct. 2130 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), “an organization’s abstract interest in a problem is insufficient to establish standing, ‘no matter how longstanding the interest and no matter how qualified the organization is in evaluating the problem!,]’ ” Feld, 659 F.3d at 24 (quoting Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 739, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972)); see also id. at 24-25 (explaining that “ ‘an organization’s abstract concern with a subject that could be affected by an adjudication does not substitute for the concrete injury’ ” that Article III demands (quoting Simon v. E. Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 40, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976))). Therefore, “organizations who seek to do no more than vindicate their own value preferences through the judicial process generally cannot establish standing.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Helpfully, the D.C. Circuit has developed standards to assist district courts in determining when an organization that has an abstract interest in a legal dispute has also established the concrete injury that is required to establish that it has Article III standing to sue on its own behalf. The Circuit has adopted a two-part test for organizational standing: courts must “ask, first, whether the agency’s action or omission to act i