The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected a nationwide ban on genetically engineered alfalfa in a decision that allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set the terms under which the crop can be grown while a full environmental review takes place. The ruling, which requires the strict application of traditional standards for permanent injunctive relief in cases brought under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), is likely to have a significant impact on how the federal government handles deregulation of agricultural biotechnology in the future.
Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, originated with a district court finding that the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) violated NEPA when it deregulated a genetically engineered crop known as Roundup Ready alfalfa. Because the government did not appeal that finding, the Supreme Court’s opinion addressed only the lower court’s remedy—issuance of a permanent injunction that both precluded the agency from considering a partial deregulation of Roundup Ready alfalfa and prohibited farmers from almost all future planting of the crop. Such an injunction, the Supreme Court ruled, was not consistent with the traditional test for granting injunctive relief.
The Court began its analysis by restating its traditional standards for injunctive relief, and reiterating that a permanent injunction should issue only when those standards are satisfied. Lower courts should not place a “thumb on the scales” in favor of an injunction in NEPA cases. Slip Op. at 15. “It is not enough,” the Supreme Court noted, “to ask whether there is a good reason why an injunction should not issue.” Id. at 16. A lower court must affirmatively “determine that an injunction should issue” by applying the Court’s traditional test. Id.
In this particular case, the lower court’s broad injunction essentially prohibited any deregulation of Roundup Ready alfalfa, “no matter how small the risk that the planting authorized [by APHIS] . . . would adversely affect the environment in general and respondents in particular.” Id. at 20. The Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated the sort of irreparable injury necessary to justify this type of unqualified injunctive relief. The Court explained that “a partial deregulation” of Roundup Ready alfalfa “need not cause [plaintiffs] any injury at all, much less irreparable injury.” Id. at 21. Thus, “the District Court’s order prohibiting any partial deregulation improperly relieve[d] [plaintiffs] of their burden to make the requisite evidentiary showing.” Id. at 21-22.
Just as significant, the Supreme Court warned that even if APHIS has violated NEPA in connection with a petition for complete deregulation of a genetically engineered crop, it is “for the agency to decide” whether partial deregulation of that same crop is appropriate while the NEPA violation is being remedied. Id. at 17. What precisely this means in practice remains to be determined. But it seems clear that the Supreme Court wants questions about the environmental impacts of genetically engineered crops to be answered first by APHIS, rather than by a district court responding to a request for injunctive relief. In the long run, this holding will likely increase APHIS’s responsibilities, and could lead to increased agency responsiveness to parties seeking to commercialize agricultural biotechnology.