National Association of Home Builders has filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior. The developers group contends that the Interior Department illegally expanded its power to list endangered species through the use of a solicitor’s opinion that reversed an earlier policy requiring populations of species to be considered “distinct” or geographically discrete and significant to the species as a whole.

 

The litigation follows a 2003 case in which the association successfully challenged the listing of cactus ferruginous pygmy owls in Southern Arizona. In that ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the builders that the government was wrong to consider the owls a distinct population that was significant to the species. Environmentalists decried the ruling, saying it would doom the species in the United States. The owl was delisted n 2006.

 

Developers Attack Endangered Species Act (by Sonya Angelica Diehn, Courthouse News Service)

National Association of Home Builders v. Ken Salazar (U.S. District Court, District of Columbia) (pdf)