Lemon v. Geren’s Empirical Analysis
514 F.3d 1312 · 2008
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 16 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Wildearth Guardians v. Jewell (2013), Sierra Club v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (2016)
5 federal appellate · 16 district · 4 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 16 U.S.C. § 470 (National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000) · 16 U.S.C. § 470F · 42 U.S.C. § 4321 (§ 2 of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969) · 42 U.S.C. § 4332 (§ 102 of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969)
Relies on Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife · Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council · Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council · Money Station Inc v. Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System · City of Waukesha v. Environmental Protection Agency
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“intervening events make it impossible to grant the prevailing party effective relief,”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he idea ... is that if the agency’s eyes are open to the environmental consequences of its actions and if it considers options that entail less environmental damage, it may be persuaded to alter what it proposed.... Sometimes, the Article III injury in these types of cases is called a “procedural injury,” the thought being that plaintiffs suffer harm from the agency’s failure to follow [administrative] procedures, compliance with which might have changed the agency’s mind for the reasons just given.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.