American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v. Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus

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United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 5, 2002 Decided February 4, 2003

No. 01-7166

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, ET AL.,
APPELLANTS

v.

RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY CIRCUS AND
FELD ENTERTAINMENT, INC.,
APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(00cv01641)

Katherine Anne Meyer argued the cause for appellants.
With her on the briefs were Eric R. Glitzenstein and Jona-
than R. Lovvorn.

Bills of costs must be filed within 14 days after entry of judgment.
The court looks with disfavor upon motions to file bills of costs out
of time.
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Harris Weinstein argued the cause for appellees. With
him on the brief were Eugene D. Gulland, Elliott Schulder,
and Kevin C. Newsom.
Before: RANDOLPH and ROGERS, Circuit Judges, and
WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.
RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: Asian elephants perform at the
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Animal
Welfare Institute, the Fund for Animals, and Thomas Rider
sued Ringling Bros. and its owner, Feld Entertainment, Inc.,
claiming that Asian elephants are an endangered species and
that the circus mistreated its elephants in violation of the
Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq. The only
question is whether, as the district court ruled in dismissing
their complaint, plaintiffs lack standing under Article III of
the Constitution.
The strongest case for standing is presented by Thomas
Rider. The relevant allegations in the complaint relating to
him are as follows. Ringling Bros. holds circus performances
in the United States and other countries. It sometimes
stages events in which its Asian elephants parade along public
streets. Rider worked for Ringling Bros. from June 1997 to
November 1999, tending the elephant barns and working as a
‘‘handler.’’ As a result of his work with the elephants he
formed a ‘‘strong, personal attachment to these animals.’’
Employees of Ringling Bros. beat the elephants with sharp
bull hooks, kept the elephants in chains for long periods of
time, and forcibly removed baby elephants from their moth-
ers at an earlier age than they could normally be weaned in
the wild. These actions have negative impacts on the ele-
phants’ behavior ‘‘wherever they perform or are exhibited.’’
Rider has seen the elephants show stressful ‘‘stereotypic’’
behavior as a result. Department of Agriculture inspectors
saw lesions and rope burns on the elephants. Rider left his
job at Ringling Bros. because of the mistreatment of the
elephants. He would like to work with the elephants again
and would attempt to do so if the elephants were relocated.
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Rider would also like to visit the elephants, but is unwilling to
do so because he would suffer ‘‘aesthetic and emotional
injury’’ from seeing the animals unless they are placed in a
different setting or are no longer mistreated.
The complaint was brought under the citizen-suit provision
of the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g), which
allows any person to commence a civil suit to enjoin violations
of the Act or its regulations. Id. § 1540(g)(1)(A). Plaintiffs
provided written notice to the Secretary of the Interior and to
Ringling Bros. sixty days before filing suit. Id.
§ 1540(g)(2)(A). They sought a declaratory judgment that
Ringling Bros. violated the Act and the regulations thereun-
der, an injunction against future violations, forfeiture of the
elephants, and other relief.
The citizen-suit provision in the Endangered Species Act,
by specifying that ‘‘any person’’ may be a plaintiff, eliminates
any prudential standing requirement. See Bennett v. Spear,
520 U.S. 154, 163–65 (1997). Rider still must satisfy Article
III by showing that he has suffered an injury in fact, fairly
traceable to the defendant’s action, and capable of judicial
redress. See id. at 167.
Rider failed to make such a showing, the district court
ruled, because his exposure to the mistreatment of the ele-
phants in the past did not cause him any present injury or
threaten to cause any injury in the near future. Rider
claimed that he wanted to work with the elephants again.
But whether he could find such employment if Ringling Bros.
were ordered to forfeit the elephants was, in the court’s view,
speculative. Rider’s remaining arguments for standing – his
general emotional upset, and his ‘‘continuing injury’’ from
having quit his job – were insufficient for reasons unneces-
sary to recount. (The district court also held that the re-
maining individual and organizational plaintiffs lacked stand-
ing.)
We believe Rider has alleged enough to show injury in
fact – that is, ‘‘an invasion of a judicially cognizable interest
which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or
imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’’ Bennett, 520 U.S.
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at 167; Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560
(1992). ‘‘At the pleading stage, general factual allegations of
injury resulting from the defendant’s conduct may suffice’’
because courts assume plaintiffs can back up their general
claims with specifics at trial. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. Rid-
er’s allegations of injury fit within decisions of this court and
the Supreme Court recognizing that harm to one’s aesthetic
interests in viewing animals may be a sufficient injury in fact.
See id. at 562–63; Japan Whaling Ass’n v. American Cetace-
an Soc’y, 478 U.S. 221, 230 (1986); Sierra Club v. Morton,
405 U.S. 727, 734–35 (1972); Animal Legal Def. Fund v.
Glickman, 154 F.3d 426, 432 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (en banc).
In Glickman, one of the plaintiffs had an ‘‘aesthetic’’ inter-
est in observing animals under humane conditions. Glick-
man, 154 F.3d at 431. He regularly visited a particular zoo
and saw conditions to which he objected, such as chimpanzees
housed in isolation (causing social deprivation), adult bears
placed in proximity to squirrel monkeys (frightening the
latter), and other conditions he believed to be inhumane. Id.
at 429–30. Given his desire and plan to visit the zoo in the
future, we held that he had alleged an injury in fact. Id. at
431–32.
While the complaint here says the elephants are still being
mistreated, continuing harm to the animals is not our main
focus. It is Rider who must be suffering injury now or in the
immediate future. What we have written about Rider’s expe-
rience at Ringling Bros. cannot suffice. In actions for injunc-
tive relief, harm in the past – as the district court correctly
held – is not enough to establish a present controversy, or in
terms of standing, an injury in fact. The question thus is
whether the complaint contains enough to show some present
or imminent injury to Rider. We believe it does.
In Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs.
(TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 181–82 (2000), the injury to the
organizational plaintiffs stemmed from the defendant’s dis-
charging pollutants into a river. Some of plaintiffs’ members
had used the river and its environs for recreation in the past.
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Because of the pollution they had not gone back, but would if
the discharges ceased. The Court found injury in fact: the
discharges affected the members’ ‘‘recreational, aesthetic, and
economic interests’’ and the members’ conditional statements
about visiting the river again could not be dismissed as mere
speculation. Id. at 184.
To generalize from Glickman and Laidlaw, an injury in
fact can be found when a defendant adversely affects a
plaintiff’s enjoyment of flora or fauna, which the plaintiff
wishes to enjoy again upon the cessation of the defendant’s
actions. Rider says he became attached to the elephants
when he worked with them and would like to ‘‘visit’’ them
again ‘‘so that he can continue his personal relationship with
them, and enjoy observing them.’’ Exactly what sort of
‘‘visit’’ he has in mind is not spelled out. We can be sure that
the prospect of his working in the elephant barns again is nil.
But we believe a fair construction of his allegation encompass-
es Rider’s attending the circus as any member of the public
would, by purchasing a ticket and viewing the show from the
audience. From this vantage point he might observe either
direct physical manifestations of the alleged mistreatment of
the elephants, such as lesions, or detect negative effects on
the animals’ behavior, which he claims he would recognize
based on his experience working at Ringling Bros. This
takes his claim out of the category of a generalized interest in
ensuring the enforcement of the law, which would be insuffi-
cient to establish Article III standing. See Common Cause v.
Fed. Election Comm’n, 108 F.3d 413, 418 (D.C. Cir. 1997).
And it distinguishes him from other members of the public,
including those who attend the circus.
We recognize that Rider’s allegations differ from those in
Glickman in one respect. Like the Glickman plaintiff who
had regularly gone to a zoo, Rider claims to have witnessed
inhumane treatment of animals while he was working for the
circus. But unlike the Glickman plaintiff, if Rider returned
to the circus as a member of the audience there is nothing to
indicate that he would be in a position to witness the mis-
treatment again. Even so, we cannot see why this should
matter as far as his standing is concerned. The plaintiffs in
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Laidlaw may not have seen the pollutants being discharged
into the river; it was sufficient that they detected the effects
of the pollution on the ecology. Here, the complaint alleges
mistreatment and Rider says he is able to detect the effects,
even if he does not directly observe the mistreatment. Given
the posture of the case, we must assume the truth of the
claims.
We think Humane Society v. Babbitt, 46 F.3d 93 (D.C. Cir.
1995), in which we found the plaintiffs lacked standing, is
different from this case. In Babbitt, which reached us at the
summary judgment stage, we expressed doubt whether a
plaintiff had alleged an injury in fact based on her lost
opportunity to study Asian elephants generally and her inabil-
ity to observe a particular Asian elephant when the zoo
removed it. Babbitt, 46 F.3d at 97–100. (We ultimately held
that the causation and redressability requirements were not
satisfied. Id. at 100.) Rider’s alleged injuries are different.
Unlike the plaintiff in Babbitt, Rider alleged a strong person-
al attachment to the elephants. Id. at 97. In Babbitt, we left
open the question whether ‘‘emotional attachment to a partic-
ular animal TTT could form the predicate of a claim of injury.’’
Id. at 98. We answer that question in the affirmative today.
A person may derive great pleasure from visiting a certain
river; the pleasure may be described as an emotional attach-
ment stemming from the river’s pristine beauty. Laidlaw,
528 U.S. at 182–83. We can see no principled distinction
between the injury that person suffers when discharges begin
polluting the river and the injury Rider allegedly suffers from
the mistreatment of the elephants to which he became emo-
tionally attached during his tenure at Ringling Bros. – both
are part of the aesthetic injury. Contrast Valley Forge
Christian Coll. v. Americans United for Separation of
Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 485–86 (1982). Babbitt
also noted that removing one of the Asian elephants did not
appear to threaten the plaintiff’s opportunity to observe the
species because three others were still at the zoo. Babbitt, 46
F.3d at 97. Rider’s personal relationship with the elephants
eliminates the concern, expressed in Babbitt, that a plaintiff
who could continue to observe several animals of a particular
species might not be injured if one of the animals were
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removed. Rider has also stated a desire to visit the ele-
phants, making his injury present or imminent; the plaintiff
in Babbitt did not assert an intent to return to the zoo to
observe elephants and thus had not alleged an imminent
injury. Id. These factors, coupled with the lesser standard
required to show standing on a motion to dismiss, distinguish
this case from Babbitt.
For these reasons, Rider has made a sufficient allegation of
injury in fact to satisfy the first element of the standing
analysis.
The second element in Article III standing is a causal
connection between the injury and the defendant’s conduct –
‘‘the injury must be fairly traceable to the challenged action
of the defendant.’’ Bennett, 520 U.S. at 167. It is unques-
tioned that Ringling Bros.’s alleged actions – inhumane treat-
ment of the elephants – are the source of the aesthetic
injuries that Rider alleges.
The third element for standing is redressability. A plain-
tiff must show that it is ‘‘likely, as opposed to merely specula-
tive, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable deci-
sion.’’ Bennett, 520 U.S. at 167. Rider seeks two forms of
relief – an injunction that would stop Ringling Bros. from
continuing to mistreat the elephants in violation of the En-
dangered Species Act and its regulations and an order direct-
ing Ringling Bros. to forfeit possession of the elephants. If
Rider wins the case, we must assume – because the case is at
the pleading stage – that his injury will be resolved. Al-
though the complaint does not come right out and say that an
end to mistreatment will bring about a change in the ele-
phants’ behavior, this is a fair inference. It may also be
inferred that if Rider wins, the elephants will no longer
exhibit the physical effects of mistreatment. Rider then will
be able to attend the circus without any aesthetic injury. It
follows that Rider has alleged enough to show that his
injuries will likely be redressed if he is successful on the
merits.
Based upon his desire to visit the elephants (which we must
assume might include attending a performance of the circus),
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his experience with the elephants, his alleged ability to recog-
nize the effects of mistreatment, and what an injunction
would accomplish, Rider’s allegations are sufficient to with-
stand a motion to dismiss for lack of standing. We therefore
do not decide whether the other plaintiffs have standing
because each of them is seeking relief identical to what Rider
seeks. See, e.g., Watt v. Energy Action Educ. Found., 454
U.S. 151, 160 (1981); Glickman, 154 F.3d at 445.
The judgment of the district court dismissing the complaint
for lack of standing is therefore reversed.
So ordered.