Case Explained: ALLIANCE FOR THE WILD ROCKIES V. HIGGINS, ET AL.

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Filed: 2026-07-16

Docket: 2:19-cv-00332-

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the United States Forest Service, holding that the Alliance for the Wild Rockies was not required to exhaust its administrative remedies regarding the applicability of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) categorical exclusion during the scoping process. The panel determined that no statutory or regulatory issue-exhaustion requirement exists for HFRA collaborative restoration projects under 16 U.S.C. § 6591b, and a judicially imposed requirement was unwarranted because the HFRA scoping process is an informal, non-adversarial proceeding analogous to the non-notice-and-comment rulemaking addressed in *Alaska Survival v. Surface Transp. Bd.* Additionally, the court found that the Alliance’s claim—that the Forest Service improperly applied a local definition of “wildland-urban interface” rather than the statutory definition—did not fall within the categories of challenges requiring issue exhaustion under *Vermont Yankee* or *Public Citizen*, as it was a legal challenge to statutory authority rather than a request for the agency to consider new alternatives. Consequently, the case is remanded to the district court to address the merits of the Alliance’s challenge regarding whether the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously in applying the categorical exclusion.

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