Supreme Court of the United States · Official docket →
Lonny E. Baley, et al. v. United States, et al.
Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 2018-1323, 2018-1325 · judgment November 14, 2019
Before the decision, well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.
Question presented
Petitioners are a plaintiff class of Oregon and California farmers and ranchers who depend on their water rights in the Klamath River basin to irrigate their land. When the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation cut off their water supplies to protect endangered fish, petitioners sued the United States alleging a Fifth Amendment physical taking. Congress and this Court have determined that federal entities must defer to state water law for a comprehensive approach to quantify and administer water rights. By contrast, the Federal Circuit held that the Bureau did not take petitioners’ property interests in their water rights because state law did not apply. Instead, and in the absence of any state adjudicatory determination of water rights, the Federal Circuit concluded that there exist senior tribal water rights to quantities of water at least as great as the water the Bureau determined was required for fish under the Endangered Species Act. Petitioners and the State of Oregon explained below that this decision upends a century of western water law and destroys the efficacy of Oregon’s adjudication of state-based and federal reserved water rights, which Congress endorsed in the McCarran Amendment, 43 U.S.C. 666, and Reclamation Act, 43 U.S.C. 372, 383. The question presented is: Whether, against the legal backdrop of Congress’s and this Court’s recognition of the primacy of state law to determine, quantify, and administer water rights, a federal court may deem federal agency regulatory action under the Endangered Species Act to constitute the adjudication and administration of water rights for tribal purposes.
Counsel of record
For petitioner
Paul Scott Simmons
Somach Simmons and Dunn
For respondent
Noel John Francisco
Jones Day
Proceedings
- Jun 22 2020Petition DENIED.
- Jun 02 2020DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 6/18/2020.
- May 29 2020Reply of petitioners Lonny Baley, et al. filed. (Distributed)
- May 14 2020Brief of respondent United States in opposition filed.
- May 14 2020Brief of respondent Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in opposition filed.
- Apr 16 2020Brief amici curiae of Professors Ronald A. Cass, David F. Forte, James L. Huffman, Donald J. Kochan, Jesse J. Richardson and Reed Watson filed.
- Apr 16 2020Brief amicus curiae of Association of California Water Agencies filed.
- Apr 16 2020Brief amici curiae of Pacific Legal Foundation, et al. filed.
- Apr 15 2020Brief amici curiae of The American Farm Bureau Federation and the State Farm Bureau Organizations of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming filed.
- Apr 14 2020Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including May 14, 2020, for all respondents.
- Apr 14 2020Brief amicus curiae of The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District filed.
- Apr 14 2020Brief amici curiae of Oregon Water Resources Congress, et al. filed.
- Apr 13 2020Motion to extend the time to file a response from April 16, 2020 to May 14, 2020, submitted to The Clerk.
- Mar 13 2020Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due April 16, 2020)
- Jan 29 2020Application (19A842) granted by The Chief Justice extending the time to file until March 13, 2020.
- Jan 27 2020Application (19A842) to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari from February 12, 2020 to March 13, 2020, submitted to The Chief Justice.