UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA STATE OF CALIFORNIA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Civil Action No. 19-960 (RDM) DONALD TRUMP, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION Plaintiffs—the states of California, Oregon, and Minnesota—challenge Executive Order 13,771 and the implementing Guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) as violative of the separation of powers, the Constitution’s Take Care Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq. California and Oregon first moved to intervene in a parallel case also before the Court, Public Citizen, Inc. v. Trump, No. 17- 253 (filed Feb. 8, 2017), but the Court denied their motion because of doubts as to whether the plaintiffs who brought that case had Article III standing. California, Oregon, and Minnesota then filed this action. Dkt. 1 (Compl.). To a considerable degree, this case echoes the issues and arguments that this Court considered in Public Citizen. See Pub. Citizen, Inc. v. Trump (“Public Citizen I”), 297 F. Supp. 3d 6, 34 (D.D.C. 2018); Pub. Citizen, Inc. v. Trump (“Public Citizen II”), 361 F. Supp. 3d 60 (D.D.C. 2019); Pub. Citizen, Inc. v. Trump (“Public Citizen III”), No. 17-253, 2019 WL 7037579 (D.D.C. Dec. 20, 2019). In both this case and in Public Citizen, the plaintiffs challenged the Executive Order and argued that it had delayed or derailed the promulgation of desired rules. In both cases, the defendants denied that the Executive Order was to blame—at least with respect to the specific regulatory actions or inactions the plaintiffs identified. And, in both cases, the plaintiffs offered declarations describing the actual or imminent injuries they alleged, and the defendants offered declarations denying that the Executive Order caused the delays or precipitated the regulatory actions. Despite these similarities, this case raises issues of its own. First, unlike the organizations that sued in Public Citizen, the plaintiffs in this case are sovereign states. That makes a difference, according to Plaintiffs, because states are entitled to “special solicitude” in evaluating their Article III standing to sue. Second, unlike the plaintiffs in Public Citizen, the plaintiffs in this case assert procedural injuries. That matters, according to Plaintiffs, because the imminence and redressability requirements for Article III standing are relaxed when a plaintiff asserts a procedural injury. Third, unlike the plaintiffs in Public Citizen, the plaintiffs in this case assert that they have been, or will likely be, injured by the repeal of two rules not at issue in Public Citizen—revocation of the Federal Highway Administration’s Greenhouse Gas Performance Measure and the rollback of the Head Start minimum service duration requirement. The first of these actions harms the states, according to Plaintiffs, because they bear “real and significant costs as a result of greenhouse gas-induced climate change,” Dkt. 17 at 37, and the second harms the states because they must fill the service gap left by the repeal, id. at 46. Plaintiffs contend that those injuries, along with the injuries resulting from the delays in finalizing two additional rules that ...
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