Before the Supreme Court now is the Sierra Club's petition for the writ of certiorari in Sierra Club v. Hickel, 1 ELR 20015, 2 ERC 2669, __ F.2d __ (9th Cir. Sept. 16, 1970). The Sierra Club seeks certiorari because the court of appeals held (2-1), in a decision reversing the district court below (1 ELR 20011), that the club did not have standing to challenge the actions of federal officials who were about to permit Walt Disney Productions, Inc. to construct a winter ski resort facility that would require extensive development in both the Sequoia National Park, which surrounds and overlooks Mineral King Valley, and in the Sequoia National Game Refuge, which lies in the Valley. The Ninth Circuit also held (3-0) that the district court erred in granting the club a preliminary injunction. The Ninth Circuit stayed its order pending action on this petition for certiorari.

The Supreme Court has yet to agree to hear a case in which the standing to sue of an environmental organization has been directly challenged. Until last September, such a hearing did not appear necessary. Federal courts on all levels had enlarged and refined the range of interests that parties might show in order to establish that they had standing to sue.¹ Many of the federal cases in which standing was in dispute did not involve environmental interests; nevertheless, in these cases, dicta tended to support the sufficiency for purposes of standing of a wide range of environmental interests. See, e.g., Association of Data Processing Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 154 (1970).