## Facts

- Individual consumers and workers, along with animal-welfare and worker-advocacy organizations, sued the Secretary of Agriculture challenging USDA’s position that the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958 (HMSA), 7 U.S.C. §§ 1901–1907, does not cover poultry.
- USDA had reiterated in a 2005 Federal Register notice that there is no specific federal humane handling and slaughter statute for poultry and maintained that poultry are excluded from the HMSA phrase “other livestock.”
- Plaintiffs alleged that excluding poultry from humane-slaughter requirements permitted inhumane handling and slaughter, causing animal-welfare harms and contributing to food-safety and worker-safety risks.
- The district court denied a standing-based motion to dismiss, then granted summary judgment to USDA on the merits, concluding Congress intended to exclude poultry.
- Plaintiffs appealed; the court of appeals addressed Article III standing, focusing on redressability rather than statutory meaning.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs had Article III standing to challenge USDA’s interpretive position, specifically whether their alleged injuries were likely redressable by a favorable court decision.
2. Whether a judicial declaration about the HMSA’s coverage could provide effective relief given the repeal of the statute’s original enforcement mechanism and the role of agency discretion and third-party conduct.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit held plaintiffs lacked Article III standing because they failed to satisfy redressability.
- The court vacated the district court’s merits judgment and remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
- The court reasoned that the HMSA’s only enforcement mechanism had been repealed in 1978, making it unlikely that a favorable interpretation would produce concrete, enforceable changes.
- The court found plaintiffs’ theory of relief depended on discretionary actions by the Secretary and subsequent behavior changes by independent poultry processors, rendering the claimed relief speculative.
- The court rejected the assertion that interpreting the HMSA to include poultry would legally compel USDA to regulate poultry as “amenable species” or to issue specific humane-handling regulations that would address plaintiffs’ asserted harms.

## Legal Principles

- Article III redressability requires a non-speculative likelihood that the requested relief will alleviate the plaintiff’s injury; mere possibility is insufficient.
- Standing is lacking where effective relief would depend on discretionary executive action and uncertain responses by independent third parties.
- A court may not proceed to the merits when jurisdiction is absent; it must vacate merits rulings and order dismissal if standing is not shown.
- Repeal or absence of an operative statutory enforcement mechanism can defeat redressability where a plaintiff seeks judicial relief that would not itself produce enforceable regulatory or compliance outcomes.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit concluded that, because the HMSA’s enforcement mechanism had been repealed and any practical change would depend on uncertain agency choices and third-party conduct, plaintiffs could not show their alleged harms were likely to be remedied by a favorable decision; the court therefore vacated the merits judgment and ordered dismissal for lack of Article III standing.


Levine v. Vilsack, 587 F.3d 986 (9th Cir. 2009)