Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Micah 6:8 Mission and Healthy Gulf sued Reynolds Metals Company, L.L.C. under the Clean Water Act’s citizen-suit provision. They alleged that Reynolds was violating the Act by discharging pollutants from its petroleum coke calcining facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Before suing, the plaintiffs notified Reynolds, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and the Environmental Protection Agency of the alleged violations. LDEQ investigated and issued a memo finding no Clean Water Act violation. The district court judicially noticed that memo, deferred to LDEQ’s conclusion, and dismissed the suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. It later denied reconsideration.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit held that the district court abused its discretion by treating LDEQ’s disputed finding as true. Although a court may judicially notice the existence and contents of a public report, it may not rely on disputed factual assertions within the report to establish their truth. Whether Reynolds was discharging pollutants in violation of the Clean Water Act was neither generally known nor beyond reasonable dispute.
The court vacated the dismissal and remanded for the district court to reconsider jurisdiction without accepting LDEQ’s no-violation finding as true. Under the Clean Water Act, jurisdiction exists when citizen plaintiffs make a good-faith allegation of a continuous or intermittent violation; they need not prove at the jurisdictional stage that the defendant was actually violating the Act when the suit began. Allegations limited to wholly past violations, however, are insufficient.
Key Takeaways
- Courts may judicially notice that a government report exists and what it says, but may not accept reasonably disputed facts in the report as true.
- An agency’s finding of no Clean Water Act violation does not itself defeat federal jurisdiction over a citizen suit.
- On remand, the district court must determine whether the plaintiffs made a good-faith allegation that Reynolds was continuously or intermittently violating the Act.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the distinction between noticing a public document and accepting its factual conclusions as proven. A district court cannot resolve a disputed environmental merits question through judicial notice at the jurisdictional stage.
For Clean Water Act litigants, the opinion confirms that citizen-suit jurisdiction turns on a good-faith allegation of an ongoing or intermittent violation, not on whether the plaintiff has already proved the alleged violation or overcome an agency’s contrary conclusion.