Background
The Export-Import Bank agreed to lend up to $5 billion to finance a liquefied-natural-gas project in Mozambique. After insurgent attacks prompted the project operator to suspend work in 2021, Eximbank approved a 2025 amendment extending several financing and project dates by four years so the previously authorized loan could be disbursed on an adjusted schedule. Eximbank concluded that the amendment contained no material change from the original approval and did not provide a new notice-and-comment period.
Friends of the Earth U.S. and Justiça Ambiental sued Eximbank and its board members under the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Export-Import Bank Act, and Eximbank’s procedures. They sought a preliminary injunction barring further disbursements and obligations under the loan agreement. The district court denied relief, finding most standing theories deficient and concluding that the organizations were unlikely to succeed on the claims for which they had shown likely standing.
The Court’s Holding
The D.C. Circuit affirmed. The court held that the organizations lacked standing based on the lost opportunity to comment because that procedural deprivation was shared by the public and was not tied to a distinct risk to a particularized organizational interest. Their asserted diversion-of-resources injury also failed because the causal chain from Eximbank’s amendment to displacement, regional violence, increased demand for services, and danger to staff depended on too many intervening events and third-party decisions.
The organizations likewise lacked informational standing to demand an updated economic-impact analysis because the Bank Act requires disclosure only if Eximbank elects to conduct such an analysis, and no analysis was conducted for the 2025 amendment. Although the majority found likely informational standing regarding environmental materials, it held that the organizations were unlikely to prevail: NEPA excludes agency activities or decisions whose effects are located entirely outside U.S. jurisdiction, and the asserted domestic climate effects were too attenuated. Eximbank’s procedures also required disclosure only of specified materials that the borrower was required to submit, and the organizations did not allege that such materials had been submitted for the amendment.
Key Takeaways
- A lost opportunity to participate in notice and comment does not establish standing without a concrete, particularized interest affected by the procedural deprivation.
- An organizational injury cannot rest on an attenuated causal chain involving uncertain conduct by insurgents, foreign officials, project personnel, and local residents.
- Informational standing requires a legal entitlement to disclosure; the Bank Act did not require an economic-impact analysis unless Eximbank chose to conduct one.
- The majority found standing to seek environmental information but concluded that NEPA did not cover the Mozambique project because its environmental effects were overseas and the alleged domestic climate effects lacked a sufficiently close causal connection.
Why It Matters
The decision limits efforts to challenge federal financing of overseas projects through procedural and informational injuries. Organizations must connect a denied procedure or disclosure to a legally protected, particularized interest and cannot rely on remote downstream effects involving multiple independent actors.
Senior Judge Randolph concurred in part and dissented in part. He agreed that the organizations could not prevail but would have held that they also lacked informational standing on the NEPA claim, requiring dismissal of the complaint rather than a merits ruling on that claim.