## Facts

- The National Park Service (NPS) awards concession contracts to private operators to provide services (e.g., lodging and restaurants) in national parks.
- Congress enacted the Contract Disputes Act of 1978 (CDA) to govern disputes arising out of certain government contracts.
- Congress also enacted the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998, directing a concession management program for national parks.
- NPS issued regulations implementing the 1998 Act, including 36 C.F.R. § 51.3, stating that the CDA does not apply to concession contracts.
- The National Park Hospitality Association (NPHA), representing concessioners, filed a facial, pre-enforcement challenge asserting that the CDA applies and that NPS lacked authority to declare it inapplicable.
- No specific, pending contract dispute under a concession contract was identified as the basis for the suit.

## Issues

1. Whether NPHA’s facial, pre-enforcement challenge to 36 C.F.R. § 51.3 was ripe for judicial review without a concrete concession-contract dispute.
2. Whether § 51.3 had sufficient legal effect to create present hardship justifying immediate review.
3. Whether the Court should decide, in this posture, whether the CDA applies to NPS concession contracts.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court held the controversy was not ripe for judicial resolution.
- The Court characterized § 51.3 as a nonbinding general statement of policy expressing NPS’s view about the CDA’s application.
- The Court found no present hardship because § 51.3 did not alter concessioners’ legal rights or obligations or regulate primary conduct.
- The Court emphasized that future decisionmakers resolving an actual contract dispute would not be bound by NPS’s view expressed in § 51.3.
- The Court vacated the judgment below and remanded with instructions to dismiss the complaint, without deciding whether the CDA applies to concession contracts.

## Legal Principles

- Ripeness requires considering (1) fitness of the issues for judicial decision and (2) hardship to the parties from withholding review.
- A challenge to an agency pronouncement is generally unripe when the pronouncement is nonbinding and creates no adverse legal effects in the present.
- A policy statement that neither compels conduct nor changes legal obligations typically does not create the hardship required for pre-enforcement review.
- Courts are generally reluctant to decide abstract statutory-coverage questions without a concrete factual context where legal consequences have attached.

## Conclusion

The Court dismissed the pre-enforcement facial challenge as unripe because the regulation at issue functioned only as a nonbinding policy statement and imposed no present legal hardship; the question whether the CDA governs national park concession contracts was left for a future case arising from an actual contract dispute.


Nat’l Park Hosp. Ass’n v. Dep’t of Interior, 538 U.S. 803 (2003)