## Facts

- After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, the Council on Environmental Quality requested that the Department of the Interior review its NEPA procedures for offshore oil and gas activities.
- Interior began an internal review of NEPA-related procedures and guidance applicable to outer continental shelf oil and gas exploration and development, but the review remained incomplete for years.
- The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) sued the Secretary of the Interior and the Department, alleging unlawful agency inaction.
- CBD sought an order requiring Interior to complete the internal review and to publicly release revised procedures or the review’s results.
- Interior moved to dismiss, and the court issued a memorandum opinion explaining its earlier order granting the motion and dismissing the case.

## Issues

1. Whether NEPA, the APA, or other authority imposed a discrete, nondiscretionary duty requiring Interior to complete the internal NEPA procedures review on a judicially enforceable timeline.
2. Whether Interior’s ongoing internal policy review constituted reviewable “final agency action” or otherwise could be compelled under APA § 706(1).
3. Whether CBD could obtain an order compelling public release of the review’s “findings” through an APA inaction suit rather than through FOIA.

## Decision

- The court granted the motion to dismiss and dismissed the complaint in full.
- The court held CBD failed to identify a specific, legally required action that Interior was obligated to take, as required for an APA § 706(1) claim.
- The court held the challenged conduct was an ongoing internal deliberative process and not “final agency action” reviewable under the APA.
- The court declined to compel completion of, or disclosure from, an unfinished internal review absent a clear statutory or regulatory mandate, and noted that document-access demands must proceed under FOIA.

## Legal Principles

- APA § 706(1) permits courts to compel only discrete agency actions that are legally required; generalized claims seeking to manage broad agency policymaking are not cognizable.
- NEPA’s procedural requirements generally attach to specific proposed federal actions; NEPA does not, by itself, impose a continuing duty to revise internal guidance or complete self-initiated procedural reviews on a set schedule.
- Judicial review under the APA generally requires “final agency action” that marks the consummation of agency decisionmaking and produces legal consequences.
- Requests to obtain agency records or deliberative materials ordinarily must be pursued through FOIA rather than reframed as APA inaction claims.

## Conclusion

The court dismissed CBD’s suit because it sought judicial compulsion of an open-ended internal policy review without identifying a discrete, mandatory duty or any final agency action, and because any effort to obtain materials from the ongoing review belonged in a FOIA proceeding rather than an APA action.


Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. Zinke, 260 F. Supp. 3d 11 (D.D.C. 2017)