Salt River Wild Horse Management Group et al v. United States Department of Agriculture et al

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WO
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA
Salt River Wild Horse Management Group,
Plaintiff,
v.
United States Department of Agriculture, et
al.,
Defendants.
No. CV-24-08148-PCT-JJT
ORDER
On April 24, 2026, the Court entered an Order (Doc. 66) granting Plaintiff Salt River
Wild Horse Management Group’s Application for Temporary Restraining Order (“TRO”)
(Doc. 64) without notice to Defendants, provisionally granting Plaintiff’s request to file a
supplemental complaint, and setting a briefing schedule and hearing on Plaintiff’s
Application for a Preliminary Injunction (Doc. 64, App.).1 Both the Federal Defendants
and Defendant Rail Lazy H Contracting and Consulting LLC (“Rail”) timely filed
Responses to Plaintiff’s Preliminary Injunction Application and Motion to Supplement
Complaint (Doc. 71, Fed. Defs.’ Resp.; Doc. 72, Rail Resp.), and Plaintiff timely filed a
Reply (Doc. 73, Reply). Upon review of the briefing, the Court determined it was
unnecessary to hear further argument from the parties and vacated the Preliminary
Injunction hearing. (Doc. 74.)
1 While the Clerk of Court was in the process of entering the Court’s Order (Doc. 66), the
Federal Defendants filed a Response to Plaintiff’s Motion (Doc. 65) and, the day after the
Court entered the TRO, Plaintiff filed a Reply (Doc. 67). The Court considered only
Plaintiff’s briefing in the Application (Doc. 64) in entering the TRO.
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The Court begins, as it must, by considering Plaintiff’s request to file a supplement
to its Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”), the operative pleading, because the proposed
new supplemental claims form the basis of Plaintiff’s Application for Preliminary
Injunction. First, the Court finds that Plaintiff’s allegations in its Proposed Supplemental
Pleading to Its Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 64-11, Proposed Supp. Compl. (“PSC”))
go so far beyond Plaintiff’s SAC that they constitute new claims instead of supplemental
allegations to the existing claims. As the Court set forth in its prior Order (Doc. 66), Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 15(d) provides that the Court may, “on motion and reasonable
notice” as well as “just terms,” permit a plaintiff to supplement a complaint to set out “any
transaction, occurrence, or event that happened after the date of the pleading to be
supplemented.” The goal of Rule 15(d) is “judicial efficiency,” determined by assessing
“whether the entire controversy between the parties could be settled in one action.”
Planned Parenthood of S. Ariz. v. Neely, 130 F.3d 400, 402 (9th Cir. 1997) (internal
quotations and citation omitted). But, “[w]hile leave to permit supplemental pleading is
favored, it cannot be used to introduce a separate, distinct and new cause of action.” Id.
(internal quotations and citations omitted).
With the aid of the parties’ briefing, a comparison of the claims raised in the Second
Amended Complaint (Doc. 45, SAC) and those raised in the Proposed Supplemental
Complaint reveals that the claims are not the same. In both the SAC and PSC, Plaintiff
raises two claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A)
and (D), on the basis of Federal Defendants’ alleged failure to comply with notice
requirements and all of the Defendants’ alleged failure to comply with federal procurement
and other applicable regulations regarding the gathering, impoundment, transfer, and
auction of horses. (SAC ¶¶ 44–49; PSC ¶¶ 38–43.) But in the PSC, Plaintiff explicitly raises
new causes of action in the form of a claim for violation of the National Environmental
Policy Act (“NEPA”) and the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (“Wild
Horses Act”). (PSC ¶¶ 44–68.) On their face, these are separate, distinct, new causes of
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action not permitted in a supplemental pleading. See Planned Parenthood of S. Ariz., 130
F.3d at 402.
Moreover, while it is possible in a general sense to conclude that new, later
allegations regarding notice, gathering, impoundment, transfer, and auction of different
wild horses (or unauthorized livestock) are sufficiently related to prior allegations so as to
constitute supplemental allegations under Rule 15(d), Defendants demonstrate that that
general proposition is not applicable in this instance. The SAC and PSC address different
groups of allegedly wild horses (E.g., SAC ¶ 11 (Alpine Wild Horses); PSC ¶ 13 (Heber
Wild Horses)), and the two horse populations are separated by at least 50 miles as well as
“fences, communities, and other barriers to movement” (Fed. Defs.’ Resp. at 2 (citing Doc.
71-1, Fink Decl.)). Importantly, the classification and administration of the Heber Wild
Horses is premised on entirely different administrative acts from that of the Alpine Wild
Horses. (E.g., Fed. Defs.’ Resp. at 11 (“At bottom, Plaintiff’s proposed supplemental
allegations challenge completely separate administrative decisions stemming from the
Heber Wild Horse Territory Management Plan Environmental Assessment and Finding of
No Significant Impact, which is a new cause of action.”) If the Court allowed Plaintiff’s
proposed supplementation of the SAC to add claims related to the Heber Wild Horses, the
single case presently before the Court under the SAC raising APA claims based on the
administrative record for the Alpine Wild Horses would morph into two cases requiring
the review of two administrative records (on top of the addition of two proposed new claims
under NEPA and the Wild Horses Act, as mentioned above).2 See Ctr. for Food Safety v.
Vilsack, 2011 WL 672802, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 18, 2011) (denying a motion to
supplement the complaint and concluding that a proposed supplemental claim challenging
a new administrative decision that requires the filing of a separate administrative record
should be resolved in a separate action). For this additional reason, Plaintiff’s claims in the
2 Plaintiff’s request is thus akin to asking the Court to supplement a complaint to combine
the reviews of two separate denials of social security benefits for two separate claimants—
entered two years apart—into one case, which is inappropriate not only as a matter of law
in requiring the review of two separate administrative records together, but also as a matter
of judicial efficiency. In short, such a request is beyond the scope of a permissible
supplemental complaint under Rule 15(d).
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PSC are separate, distinct, new causes of action not permitted in a supplemental pleading.
See Planned Parenthood of S. Ariz., 130 F.3d at 402.
Second, the Court finds that Plaintiff’s proposed new allegations in the PSC are
duplicative of those already brought by other plaintiffs against the Department of
Agriculture, its individual officers, and the Forest Service. (See Int’l Soc’y for the Prot. of
Mustangs and Burros [ISPMB], et al. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agriculture, et al., Case No. 26-CV-
08092-PCT-KML, filed April 22, 2026.) There, the plaintiffs raise claims under the APA,
the Wild Horses Act, and NEPA—as Plaintiff attempts to do by supplementing the SAC in
the present case—as well as for violation of a 2007 stipulated settlement agreement
between ISPMB and the Forest Service, all regarding the disposition of the Heber Wild
Horses. Those parties have proposed, and the Court has accepted, a briefing schedule
regarding the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction in that matter that sets the
completion of briefing by the end of May. (Case No. 26-CV-08092-PCT-KML, Docs. 21,
22.) While Plaintiff here is not a party to that case, the Court is satisfied that the relief
Plaintiff attempted to seek in the PSC in this matter is at issue in that case.
In sum, Plaintiff’s allegations in the PSC are beyond the scope of a Rule 15(d)
supplemental pleading, and the Court would deny Plaintiff’s request to supplement the
SAC for that reason alone. Both parties in this matter cite Eminence Capital, LLC v.
Aspeon, Inc., 316 F.3d 1048, 1052 (9th Cir. 2003), to set forth the factors courts are to
consider when evaluating a Rule 15(d) motion to supplement the complaint, which are (1)
undue delay, (2) evidence of the movant’s bad faith or delay, (3) the repeated failure of
previous amendments, (4) undue prejudice to the opposing party—the factor that “carries
the greatest weight”—and (5) futility of the amendment. Couched in those terms, Plaintiff’s
request to supplement the SAC would prejudice Defendants, who have already litigated
this matter for two years (e.g., Rail Resp. at 14), have already produced the administrative
record related to Plaintiff’s existing claims (Doc. 63), and would have to collect and
produce a new, more expansive administrative record related to new claims regarding the
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Heber Wild Horses. Moreover, Plaintiff’s PSC is futile in light of the prior action brought
by ISPMB seeking the same relief.
In its Reply, Plaintiff suggests that the Court could grant its motion to file the PSC
and Defendants could move to consolidate the ISPMB matter with the present one. (Reply
at 4–5.) Even if the PSC in this case was warranted under Rule 15(d)—which it is not, for
all the reasons stated above—the plaintiffs in the two matters are different, and the ISPMB
plaintiffs filed their action before Plaintiff filed its PSC in this action, both of which factors
weigh against a consolidation of the ISPMB action into Plaintiff’s proposed expansion of
this action. Indeed, Plaintiff’s hypothetical proposal to consolidate simply highlights the
defects in its request to supplement the SAC to add new claims in this matter.
Finally, without a basis to grant Plaintiff leave to supplement or amend the SAC to
add the proposed new claims concerning the Heber Wild Horses, the Court cannot consider
Plaintiff’s application for a preliminary injunction premised on those new claims. See Pac.
Radiation Oncology, LLC v. Queen’s Med. Ctr., 810 F.3d 631, 636 (9th Cir. 2015) (stating
that, although “new assertions of misconduct might support additional claims against a
defendant, they do not support preliminary injunctions entirely unrelated to the conduct
asserted in the underlying complaint”). In denying Plaintiff’s motion to supplement and
thus its application for preliminary injunction, the Court makes no finding as to the merits
of Plaintiff’s proposed new claims. Rather, the Court simply finds that the present case is
not the proper vehicle to bring those claims.
For all these reasons,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED dissolving the Temporary Restraining Order entered
by the Court on April 24, 2026 (Doc. 66).
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED denying Plaintiff’s Motion to Supplement
Complaint and Application for a Preliminary Injunction. (Doc. 64.)
Dated this 1st day of May, 2026.
Honorable John J. Tuchi
United States District Judge
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