Utah Court of Appeals
2024 UT App 162
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s ruling that associational standing is not available under LUDMA, though it upheld dismissal of the case because the party lacked statutory standing.
The San Juan County Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for tent camping on a 240-acre property in Upper Mill Creek Canyon that sits on the Glen Canyon aquifer – which is the sole-source aquifer for culinary water supply for residents of a large area in both Grand County and San Juan County. Living Rivers is a nonprofit focused on water management concerns in Grand and San Juan Counties. During public hearings held on the permit request, members of the public, including Living Rivers’s director, spoke against approval, but the Planning Commission approved the permit.
Living Rivers appealed the decision to the County’s Appeal Authority. The County argued for the appeal to be dismissed, asserting Living Rivers lacked standing under LUDMA, to which Living Rivers responded asserting it had standing whereas its director and other members were residents of Grand and San Juan Counties and would personally suffer harm from the permit, and that Living Rivers had grants to conduct research and other investments in the area, including donations from its members that would be wasted. The Appeal Authority dismissed the appeal determining Living Rivers lacked standing as its allegations of harm were not different in kind or distinct from those of the general community, or that any individualized harms that were alleged were not inevitable. Living Rivers petitioned for judicial review, and the district court likewise dismissed for lack of standing, and also concluded that LUDMA does not allow for associational standing.
On appeal, Living Rivers argued that it was error for the district court to conclude LUDMA didn’t have a mechanism for associational standing, which would require it to establish its own standing separate from its members. The Court of Appeals agreed, concluding that whereas LUDMA defines “person” for purposes of appeal to include corporations, and that the court had previously concluded in Tooele County v. Erda Community Ass’n, 2022 UT App 123, that an association meeting the definition of person under LUDMA could have associational standing if its individual members have standing and participation of the individual members is not necessary to the resolution of the case. And unlike the outcome in Tooele County where none of the community association’s members that individually filed land use appeals had joined the petition for judicial review filed under the association’s name, here, the same party–Living Rivers–participated in both the administrative appeal and judicial appeal. The Court of Appeals therefore determined that Living Rivers could assert associational standing, but nevertheless concluded that even so, Living Rivers lacked statutory standing because the potential harms alleged were either shared with the general community, or that it could not connect alleged individual harms of some of its members to the members that reside in San Juan County specifically.
