When Do Intervenors Need to Demonstrate Article III Standing?

Wayne Land & Mineral Group, LLC v. Delaware River Basin Comm’n, 959 F.3d 569 (3d Cir. 2020). This opinion by Judge Fisher today involved a case in which plaintiff challenged the ability of defendant Delaware River Basin Commission “the Commission”) to regulate fracking. After one intervenor and its leader were permitted to intervene in the case in support of the Commission, three Pennsylvania state Senators sought to intervene in support of plaintiff. After a number of procedural twists and turns, the District Court ultimately denied the Senators the ability to intervene, but without first evaluating the issue of the Senators’ Article III standing. That issue was the focus of today’s opinion.

Judge Fisher pointed out that Article III standing is a “threshold” issue, without which a federal court lacks jurisdiction. Just as a plaintiff must show such standing in order to proceed, so must an intervenor who “seeks additional relief beyond that which the plaintiff requests.” Judge Fisher relied on Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc., 137 S.Ct. 1645 (2017), for that principle.

The Senators’ complaint in intervention contained two counts. Judge Fisher found it clear that Count II sought relief different than the relief sought by plaintiff. Plaintiff demanded “only declaratory relief,” while the Senators sought an order “directing the [Commission] to afford just compensation for the diminution of the economic value of the property it has appropriated.” Thus, the Senators needed to show Article III standing in order to proceed on that claim.

But the Third Circuit did not decide the standing issue. Instead, because there was ambiguity about whether the Senators’ Count I went beyond the relief sought by plaintiff, the panel remanded the entire standing question to the District Court, which “is best positioned to resolve [the standing] questions” and any other, “[h]aving overseen the litigation from the beginning.”