## Facts

- Environmental organizations challenged federal approval of coal leasing on the West Antelope II tracts in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.
- The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages federal coal leasing under the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA) and implementing regulations.
- Regulations provide two competitive leasing pathways: (1) regional competitive leasing within designated “coal production regions,” and (2) “leasing-by-application” outside such regions (or under specified circumstances).
- BLM designated the Powder River Basin a coal production region in 1979, then decertified it in 1990; thereafter, leasing in the basin proceeded via leasing-by-application.
- Antelope Coal applied in 2005 to lease federal coal; BLM offered the West Antelope II tracts for competitive sealed-bid leasing in 2010 under leasing-by-application.
- Plaintiffs alleged BLM was required to recertify the Powder River Basin as a coal production region before issuing the West Antelope II leases.
- Federal defendants and intervenors moved for partial judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c) targeting the recertification-based claim.

## Issues

1. Whether the recertification claim was an untimely collateral attack on BLM’s 1990 decertification decision, barred by the APA’s six-year statute of limitations.
2. Whether the MLA and implementing regulations impose a mandatory, judicially reviewable duty to recertify a coal production region before approving leases.

## Decision

- The court granted partial judgment on the pleadings and dismissed the recertification-related claim.
- The court held the claim was time-barred because it effectively challenged the 1990 decertification decision and was brought well beyond six years after that final agency action.
- The court rejected the argument that later leasing decisions reopened the decertification decision or created a new, recurring duty to recertify.
- Alternatively, the court held no statute or regulation supplied a mandatory obligation or judicially manageable standard requiring recertification; the matter was committed to agency discretion and not reviewable under the APA.

## Legal Principles

- APA challenges to final agency action are subject to a six-year limitations period; later site-specific actions generally do not revive a time-barred programmatic challenge.
- A claim framed as compelling agency action cannot proceed under the APA absent a discrete, legally required duty.
- Agency decisions are unreviewable under the APA when “committed to agency discretion by law,” including where the governing framework provides no meaningful standard for judicial review.

## Conclusion

The court dismissed the claim that BLM had to recertify the Powder River Basin as a coal production region before leasing the West Antelope II tracts because the challenge was a time-barred collateral attack on the 1990 decertification and, in any event, recertification was discretionary and lacked enforceable standards under the APA.


WildEarth Guardians v. Salazar, 783 F. Supp. 2d 61 (D.D.C. 2011)