“To come within the [administration clause of the McCarran Amendment], a suit must seek to enforce or administer rights of the sort covered by § 666(a)(1), already adjudicated.”
How later courts described this case
- “To come within the [administration clause of the McCarran Amendment], a suit must seek to enforce or administer rights of the sort covered by § 666(a)(1), already adjudicated.”
- noting that, because “[t]he United States was not required to appear and prove its water rights to prevent forfeiture of its claims[,] the water rights of the United States were not in issue”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
OCT 26 2020
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
SAN LUIS OBISPO COASTKEEPER, a No. 19-16655
project of EPIC, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
corporation; LOS PADRES FOREST D.C. No. 3:19-cv-00177-EMC
WATCH, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
corporation,
MEMORANDUM*
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE
INTERIOR; UNITED STATES BUREAU
OF RECLAMATION; BRENDA
BURMAN, Commissioner, U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Edward M. Chen, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted October 22, 2020**
San Francisco, California
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
Before: CLIFTON, N.R. SMITH, and R. NELSON, Circuit Judges.
San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper and Los Padres Forest Watch (“Coastkeeper”)
appeals the district court’s dismissal of Coastkeeper’s claim based on California
law, arguing that the district court erred in finding that the United States1 had not
waived its sovereign immunity pursuant to the McCarran Amendment, 43
U.S.C. § 666. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.
1. The Santa Maria Water Conservation District’s (“District”) prior litigation to
establish groundwater rights within the Santa Maria Valley (“Santa Maria Valley
Groundwater Litigation”) did not qualify as a comprehensive adjudication of the
United States’ water rights sufficient to waive sovereign immunity pursuant to the
McCarran Amendment. To be sufficiently “comprehensive” to waive sovereign
immunity pursuant to the McCarran Amendment, United States v. Idaho, 508 U.S.
1, 3 (1993), an adjudication of water rights “must include the undetermined claims
of all parties with an interest in the relevant water source,” United States v.
Oregon, 44 F.3d 758, 769 (9th Cir. 1994). Because neither the United States nor
its right to impound and use the Cuyama River water for flood control purposes
was subject to the Santa Maria Valley Groundwater Litigation, that litigation was
1
We refer to named defendants—the Department of the Interior and the
Bureau of Reclamation—collectively as the “United States.”
2
not a “comprehensive adjudication” of “[t]he whole community of claims . . .
involved” in this case. United States v. Dist. Court for Eagle Cty., 401 U.S. 520,
525 (1971); see also United States v. Cappaert, 508 F.2d 313, 321 (9th Cir. 1974)
(noting that, because “[t]he United States was not required to appear and prove its
water rights to prevent forfeiture of its claims[,] the water rights of the United
States were not in issue”). Thus, the United States has not waived its sovereign
immunity in this case.
Coastkeeper’s arguments to the contrary are not persuasive. First,
Coastkeeper’s attempts to equate the rights of the District—a party to the Santa
Maria Valley Groundwater Litigation—to those held by the United States are not
supported by the record. Neither the “License for [the] Diversion and Use of
Water” (“License”) from California nor the United States’ contract “Providing for
the Construction of the Santa Maria Project” (“Contract”) granted the District the
United States’ water right at issue here or otherwise authorized the District to act as
the United States’ contractual delegate with regard to that water right. Indeed, the
rights granted to the District in the License and Contract were “subject to” the
United States’ right to use the impounded water for flood control purposes.
Therefore, though the Santa Maria Valley Groundwater Litigation may have
involved “[t]he whole community of claims” within the Santa Maria Groundwater
3
Basin, see Eagle Cty., 401 U.S. at 525, it did not involve the United States’ right to
use the impounded river water for flood control purposes—the right Coastkeeper
seeks to reach in this case.
Second, Coastkeeper’s “chain of water rights” argument has no apparent
legal basis. That all water in a specific area—here, the Santa Maria Groundwater
Basin—has been apportioned out to rights holders in that area, does not mean all
upstream users who have a prior or appropriative right are somehow “involved” in
such an apportionment. The United States’ water right at issue here—the right to
impound the water and use it for flood control purposes—was not at issue in the
Santa Maria Valley Groundwater Litigation. Thus, the United States had no
“interest in the relevant water source” and has not waived its sovereign immunity.
Oregon, 44 F.3d at 769.
2. Because we have determined that there has been no comprehensive
adjudication including the United States’ right to impound the Cuyama River water
for flood control purposes, we need not reach the question of whether
Coastkeeper’s suit is an “administration” of such water rights. See Orff v. United
States, 358 F.3d 1137, 1143 n.3 (9th Cir. 2004) (“To come within the
[administration clause of the McCarran Amendment], a suit must seek to enforce
or administer rights of the sort covered by § 666(a)(1), already adjudicated.”).
4
AFFIRMED.2
2
We grant Coastkeeper’s Motion for Judicial Notice of the parallel
state court proceedings. See Fed. R. Evid. 201; accord ReadyLink Healthcare, Inc.
v. State Comp. Ins. Fund, 754 F.3d 754, 756 n.1 (9th Cir. 2014).
5