The CLC recently submitted an amicus curiae brief for the consideration of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Conservancy of Southwest Florida v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The case involves the petition of a group of environmental organizations requesting the USFWS to designate critical habitat for the federally endangered Florida panther. The CLC’s brief, in support of the Sierra Club’s petition for rehearing en banc, argues for the existence of a baseline substantive standard present in the Endangered Species Act, allowing for judicial review of the Service’s refusal to designate such habitat. Additionally, the brief seeks to establish that even if no substantive standard applies, the procedural safeguards of the Administrative Procedure Act still facilitate meaningful judicial review. The issues presented in CLC’s brief, and in the ase in general, will be especially relevant for designation of critical habitat for species listed as endangered before the 1978 amendments of the Endangered Species Act.
