Humane Society of the United States v. Donald P. Hodel, Secretary of Interior

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge WALD.

This appeal arises from a challenge lodged principally by the Humane Society of the United States (“HSUS” or “the Society”) to a series of actions by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“the Wildlife Service” or “the Service”) allowing hunting on some of America’s national wildlife refuges. The Society, joined by one of its members, Roger Kindler, alleged that in sanctioning hunting, the Wildlife Service was violating four federal environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 4331 et seq.; the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA), 16 U.S.C. §§ 1531 et seq.; the Refuge Recreation Act of 1962 (RRA), 16 U.S.C. §§ 460k et seq.; and its companion enactment, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administrative Procedure Act (NWRSAPA), 16 U.S.C. § 668dd. The Society and Kindler sought declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent such hunting.

On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court held that the Humane Society had no standing to bring this action and that Kindler had standing only to challenge NEPA violations occurring on the Virginia island of Chincoteague, the single refuge he had visited. The court reached this conclusion through a process of elimination. It first discounted some injuries described by HSUS and by Kindler as constitutionally noncognizable “emotional” injuries. It then characterized the remaining claims as involving injuries to “recreational interests” that fell outside the zone of interests protected by ESA and the two Refuge Acts. Finally, with respect to the remaining NEPA claims, the court held that the Humane Society had failed to satisfy the Supreme Court’s requirements for associational standing because the “recreational” interest of Society members which the Society sought to vindicate in this action was not germane to the group’s self-described mission of insuring the humane treatment of animals and other wildlife. That left one merits issue which Kin-dler was allowed to raise: whether the Wildlife Service had complied with NEPA in allowing a hunt opening at the Chinco-teague site. The district court held that it had.

For reasons we enumerate, we reverse the district court’s finding that the Humane Society had no standing to challenge the hunt openings, and remand to allow HSUS to pursue its challenge under all four statutes to the introduction of hunting. We affirm, however, the district court’s finding on the merits that the Wildlife Service complied with NEPA when it permitted hunting at the Chincoteague preserve.

I. Background

A. Statutory and Regulatory Background

America’s network of national wildlife refuges dates back to 1903. In that year, President Theodore Roosevelt, acting in response to public concern about the killing of pelicans, herons, egrets, ibises, spoonbills and other water birds for the millinery trade, issued an executive order designating Florida’s three-acre Pelican Island as a sanctuary where such fowl could not be killed. By the time Roosevelt left office in 1909, he had issued executive orders setting aside some 50 other preserves around the country for the enhancement and protection of wildlife ranging from migratory waterfowl to large mammals such as elks and bisons.

America today has more than 400 national wildlife refuges in 49 states and 5 trust territories. Together they cover nearly 90 million acres. Many were created in a manner akin to that first used by Roosevelt: by unilateral executive orders *48 providing for land withdrawals. Others emerged through statutorily-authorized land purchases. Most recent refuges have stemmed from congressional legislation setting aside certain areas as preserves.

Although at first blush it might seem Orwellian to permit hunting in areas styled as wildlife “refuges,” some of these executive and legislative measures creating refuges expressly left room for limited sport hunting. The most restrictive refuges have been those created expressly pursuant to the 1929 Migratory Bird Conservation Act (MBCA), 45 Stat. 1222,1224 (1929), which flatly barred hunting of birds on certain lands. By contrast, other orders, not referring to the MBCA, have contained provisions generally prohibiting the taking of wildlife “except under such rules as may be promulgated by the appropriate Secretary.” See, e.g., E.O. 8067 (Mar. 17, 1934); E.O. 8037 (Jan. 18, 1939); see also E.O. 2416 (July 25, 1940) (prohibiting the hunting, trapping or killing of birds or wild animals on 193 refuges “except as permitted by law or by rules and regulations of the Secretary of the Interior”). Similarly, some refuges created by land purchases were funded through enactments like the Duck Stamp Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 451, which as amended in 1958 allows public waterfowl hunting on 40% of the land. Finally, on a number of refuges created by federal legislation Congress has specifically authorized limited hunting of certain species.

In addition to these orders and enactments governing specific preserves, four broader federal environmental statutes, all invoked by the Humane Society in this legislation, provide standards generally relevant to the permissible scope of hunting on wildlife refuges:

(1)The Refuge Recreation Act of 1962 attempts to reconcile “mounting public demands for recreational opportunities” within the refuge system with that system’s conservationist purposes. See 16 U.S.C. § 460k. Toward this end, it forbids using refuges for forms of recreation “not directly related to the primary purposes and functions of the individual areas until the Secretary shall have determined ... that such recreational use will not interfere with the primary purposes for which the areas were established.” Id. It authorizes public recreation only when, in the judgment of the Secretary of the Interior, such recreation “can be an appropriate incidental or secondary use.” Id.

(2) The National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 broadly sets forth organizational and financial practices governing the refuge system. The subsection pertinent to this litigation authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to “permit the use of any area within the System for any purpose, including but not limited to hunting, fishing, public recreation and accommodations ... whenever he determines that such uses are compatible with the major purposes for which such areas were established.” 16 U.S.C. § 668dd(d)(l)(A). It limits hunting of migratory game birds to 40% of the territory within each refuge, “unless the Secretary finds that the taking of any species of migratory game birds in more than 40 percent of such area would be beneficial to the species.” Id.

(3) The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the broadest enactment in scope, requires in pertinent part that every proposed federal action “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment” be prefaced by a detailed “environmental impact statement” taking into account certain conditions and factors. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(C).

(4) The Endangered Species Act of 1973 sets forth procedures for preserving designated threatened or endangered species and requires, subject to certain exceptions, see 16 U.S.C. § 1539, the Secretary to take such actions “necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of such species.” 16 U.S.C. § 1533(d). It also prohibits a series of acts deemed threatening to those species. 16 U.S.C. § 1538.

B. This Litigation

On November 29, 1984, the Humane Society, a national animal and bird welfare organization claiming 75,000 dues-paying members, filed suit against William P. *49 Clark, the then-Secretary of the Interior, and Robert A. Jantzen, the Director of the Wildlife Service. In this endeavor the Society was joined by Roger A. Kindler, a Humane Society member residing in Washington, D.C.

The essence of the Humane Society’s complaint was that in the preceding few months, “an extraordinary number of wildlife refuges have been opened for the first time to hunting or have had the scope of hunting greatly expanded.” See HSUS Complaint at U18. The Society’s complaint stated that on June 1, 1984, nine refuges had been opened for migratory bird hunting, upland game hunting and/or big game hunting, see id. (citing 49 Fed.Reg. 22819 (1984)), and that on September 21, 1984, another 13 refuges were opened to similar activities. See id. (citing 49 Fed.Reg. 37093 (1984)). The Society alleged that these actions violated NEPA, ESA and the two Refuge Acts. In particular, it asserted that the Wildlife Service had opened new refuges to hunting without completing the analyses required to ensure such hunting was compatible with the purposes for which each preserve had been designated, that the Service had unlawfully adopted new procedures foregoing annual evaluations of the impact of sport hunting, and that it had failed to prepare environmental impact statements. The Society sought both declaratory and injunctive relief, asking that the Service be enjoined from opening up refuges to hunting until it completed adequate evaluations of the compatibility of hunting with the refuges’ functions and the requisite statutory environmental analyses. 1

In defense, the Wildlife Service argued principally that HSUS had no standing to bring suit, and that in allowing various hunt openings the wildlife agency had fully complied with the four environmental statutes. 2 Toward this latter end, it argued that no significant change in the operation of the refuges constituting a “major federal action” had occurred and thus that the Service had no duty to prepare an EIS. It further stated that, in any event, the agency was in the process of preparing a new programmatic EIS. The Service also contended that it had complied with the strictures of each act designed to ensure compatibility with the acts’ protective purposes.

On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court ruled that the Humane Society lacked standing to press these challenges. See Humane Society of the United States v. Clark, C.A. No. 84-3630, slip op. (D.D.C. July 25, 1986) (hereinafter “District Court Opinion”). In reaching this conclusion, the court first held that Kin-dler’s and HSUS’ claims (on behalf of its members) that they suffered from the knowledge that animals in the reserves were being killed and maimed amounted to no more than “emotional distress at the knowledge that animals and birds are being hunted for sport” and thus did not present a cognizable injury on which to ground standing, under Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 485, 102 S.Ct. 752, 765, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (rejecting as an inadequate basis for standing distress suffered as a “psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees”). See District Court Opinion at 11-12.

*50 The court held that the plaintiffs’ remaining interest in what it termed the “recreational” use of the preserves, did not appear “to be within the zone-of-interests protected by ESA or the Refuge Acts.” It reasoned that “[t]he purposes of neither ESA nor the Refuge Acts include protection of anyone’s recreational rights. The Refuge Acts ... do not protect anyone’s right to use the refuges for recreation. In fact, the Refuge Acts carefully restrict the right to use refuges for recreational purposes.” Id. at 12.

Finally, with respect to the plaintiffs' remaining claimed injuries, those stemming from impinged recreational rights under NEPA, the district court held that the Humane Society failed the second prong of the three-prong test set forth in Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53 L.Ed. 2d 383 (1977), for associational standing: that the interests the organization seeks to protect be germane to the organization’s purpose. 3 The court wrote:

Here, the interest the Humane Society seeks to protect is its members’ right to use the refuges for recreational purposes. However, protecting such rights is not a purpose of the Society. Its un-contradicted purpose is to ensure the humane treatment of animals. The Humane Society’s purposes, unlike those of many other organizations which have asserted their members’ recreational rights, e.g. Sierra Club, just do not include protection of its members’ recreational rights.

See District Court Opinion at 12-13.

That series of standing decisions left intact only those claims based on the NEPA statute pressed by HSUS member Kindler. 4 These claims were that the Service had failed to prepare or update EIS’s for various refuges and that it had further failed to prepare an updated programmatic EIS for the refuge system as a whole. The court granted summary judgment to the Wildlife Service on both claims.

With respect to Kindler’s programmatic EIS claim, the district court observed that each of the Service’s previous programmatic EIS’s, the last of which had been issued in 1976, had been upheld against NEPA challenge, and that the Service was presently preparing three new programmatic EIS’s. Id. at 15. The district court, noting the six-year statute of limitations governing NEPA claims, also granted summary judgment to the Service on all of Kindler’s site-specific claims contesting pre-1980 hunt openings where Kindler had failed to show that the Service had initiated a new hunting program or modified an existing one so as to constitute a “major federal action” within the meaning of that NEPA requirement. Id. at 15-17. As for post-1980 hunt openings, the court held, in a supplementary opinion issued after granting Kindler the opportunity to identify such openings, that Kindler had standing to challenge hunting only at Chincoteague, the one refuge he had visited. See Humane Society v. Clark, C.A. No. 84-3630, mem. op. (D.D.C. Jan. 27,1987) (hereinafter “District Court Opinion II”). It reasoned that Kindler had suffered no cognizable injury, but rather only emotional distress, at sites he had not visited. Finally, the court concluded that the Service had not acted arbitrarily and capriciously in not issuing an EIS at Chincoteague. Finding reasonable the agency’s conclusion that allowing bird hunting on one portion of Chin-coteague threatened “no significant impact,” the court held that under NEPA a *51 mere “environmental assessment,” less comprehensive than an EIS, was legally sufficient. Id. at 8-12. Accordingly, the court granted summary judgment to the Service on the merits of Kindler’s claim with respect to Chincoteague. This appeal followed.

II. STANDING

A. Constitutional Dimensions

In Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982), the Supreme Court described the standing requirement emanating from the “case or controversy” limitation of Article III of the Constitution as containing three distinct demands:

[AJt an irreducible minimum, Art. Ill requires the party who invokes the Court’s authority to “show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant,” and that the injury “fairly can be traced to the challenged action” and is “likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.” In this manner does Art. Ill limit the federal judicial power “to those disputes which confine federal courts to a role consistent with a system of separated powers and which are traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process.”

Id. at 472, 102 S.Ct. at 758 (citations and footnote omitted). The standing controversy in this case, at least insofar as its constitutional dimensions are concerned, turns on whether the first prong of this tripartite analysis, that of injury-in-fact has been satisfied. 5 That analysis in turn involves two separate inquiries: (1) whether the injuries alleged by plaintiffs here are constitutionally cognizable ones; and (2) if so, whether the Humane Society is qualified to press those claims under the Supreme Court’s test for representational standing.

1. The Adequacy of the Alleged Injuries

The Humane Society has alleged that allowing hunting on wildlife refuges injures its members in two respects. First, “HSUS and its members have demonstrated a strong interest in the preservation, enhancement and humanitarian treatment of wildlife that the National Wildlife Refuge System was designed to protect.” Second, “[m]any HSUS members utilize the refuge system for recreational purposes, including the observation of wildlife protected by the refuges, and the killing and maiming of such wildlife severely impacts on these activities.” Complaint of HSUS at ¶ 5. The 18 affidavits of Humane Society members offered in support of these interests, see Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) at 142-98, lend credence to these organizational self-descriptions.

The first of these injuries, to members’ “strong interest” in the enforcement of the Refuge and environmental laws, is an inadequate basis on which to ground standing. “[A]n asserted right to have the government act in accordance with law is not sufficient, standing alone, to confer jurisdiction on a federal court.” See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 754, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3326, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984); see also Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 222-23, 94 *52 S.Ct. 2925, 2932-33, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974) (rejecting claim of “citizen standing” and stating that “[t]o permit a complainant who has no concrete injury to require a court to rule on important constitutional issues in the abstract would create the potential for abuse in the judicial process”). Nor can the sincerity of Society members’ commitment to the enforcement of laws protecting wildlife compensate for the lack of a concrete stake. “[Sjtanding is not measured by the intensity of the litigant’s interest or the fervor of his advocacy.” Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 486, 102 S.Ct. at 766. As the Supreme Court reiterated only last Term:

‘The exercisé of judicial power ... can so profoundly affect the lives, liberty and property of those to whom it extends,’ Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 473 [102 S.Ct. at 759], that the decision to seek review must be placed ‘in the hands of those who have a direct stake in the outcome.’ Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 740 [92 S.Ct. 1361, 1369, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972)]. It is not to be placed in the hands of ‘concerned bystanders,’ who will use it simply as a ‘vehicle for the vindication of value interest.’ United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 687 [93 S.Ct. 2405, 2416, 37 L.Ed.2d 254] (1973).

Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 106 S.Ct. 1697, 1703, 90 L.Ed.2d 48 (1986) (citations abbreviated). We therefore agree with the district court that what it terms the “mere emotional injuries” in this case are noncog-nizable.

The second injury alleged by the Humane Society, however, is clearly cognizable. The gist of this grievance is that the existence of hunting on wildlife refuges forces Society members to witness animal corpses and environmental degradation, in addition to depleting the supply of animals and birds that refuge visitors seek to view. These are classic aesthetic interests, which have always enjoyed protection under standing analysis.

The leading case on the legitimacy of aesthetic injuries is Sierra Club, where the Supreme Court stated: “Aesthetic and environmental well-being, like economic well-being, are important ingredients of the quality of life in our society, and the fact that particular environmental interests are shared by the many rather than the few does not make them less deserving of legal protection through the judicial process.” 405 U.S. at 734, 92 S.Ct. at 1366. The Court subsequently reaffirmed this position in SCRAP. See 412 U.S. at 686, 93 S.Ct. at 2415. Our recent opinion in National Wildlife Federation v. Hodel, 839 F.2d 694 (D.C.Cir.1988), holding that a wildlife organization had standing to challenge Interior Department surface-mining regulations that allegedly threatened to degrade the environment, involved injuries strikingly analogous to those involved in this case: There the National Wildlife Federation’s standing rested in part on the aesthetic injuries to those members who complained of viewing degraded landscapes, see id. at 704, 707, and passim, and here the Humane Society’s standing similarly rests on the aesthetic injuries to members who complain of viewing the despoliation of animals. See also Alaska Fish & Wildlife Federation v. Dunkle, 829 F.2d 933, 937 (9th Cir.1987) (decrease in number of migratory birds “has injured those who wish to hunt, photograph, observe, or carry out scientific studies”). We therefore conclude that both HSUS and Kindler have pleaded aesthetic injuries sufficient to confer standing to challenge hunting on refuges.

2. HSUS’s Organizational Standing

We now turn to the most nettlesome issue in this case: whether the Humane Society has standing as an organization to sue on behalf of its injured members. 6 In Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53 L.Ed.2d 383 (1977), the Supreme *53 Court set forth the following test for organizational standing:

[A]n association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when: (a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.

Id. at 343, 97 S.Ct. at 2441. The vitality of this test was most recently reaffirmed in International Union, UAW v. Brock, 477 U.S. 274, 106 S.Ct. 2523, 2528-33, 91 L.Ed.2d 228 (1986), where the Court declined a specific request to reconsider and reject the Hunt principles. 7

Because the Humane Society’s members have standing to protest their aesthetic injuries in their own right, and because the declaratory and injunctive relief requested by the Society is clearly not of a type that requires the participation of any individual member, 8 the representational standing issue in this case turns on the second element of the Hunt test, the germaneness prong. The district court concluded that the Humane Society had not satisfied this requirement because its organizational purpose, as expressed in its certificate of incorporation, speaks exclusively about the protection of all living things (presumably for their own intrinsic worth), and says nothing about enhancing enjoyment or observation of these living things by other human beings. 9 See District Court Opinion at 12-13. On appeal, the Society argues that this is too parsimonious a reading of the Society’s purposes as set out in the certificate, since appreciation of and visual contact with wildlife by members is a necessary predicate in most cases to informed and effective activities by the Society for the protection of animals and birds who cannot fight for themselves in the human world. The Society argues that germaneness was never meant to be a rigid barrier to standing and that the term should be construed broadly in terms of the actual record and the demonstrated interests of the organization. The Wildlife Service counters that an organization’s litigation interest should be closely tethered to its stated purpose, something that cannot be said of the “recreational” interest advanced in this litigation by the humanitarian-focused Humane Society. 10

a. The Function and Rigor of the Germaneness Test

In appraising the rigor of the germaneness requirement, we venture onto virgin territory. Unlike the injury-in-fact prong of the Hunt test, probed in numerous Supreme Court and appellate cases, 11 and un *54 like the individual-participation prong, directly addressed by this and other courts on several occasions, 12 the parameters of germaneness have never been explored in meaningful detail by either the Supreme Court or by any federal circuit court. Such an inquiry is dispositive here because if the germaneness requirement is meant to perform the considerable screening function suggested by the Wildlife Service and the intervenors, the Humane Society’s complaint founders. 13

Our inquiry naturally begins with Hunt itself. In introducing the associational standing test, Chief Justice Burger’s opinion suggested that the Court had not developed the three prongs of injury-in-fact, ger-maneness, and individual participation sui generis, but rather that it had distilled each requirement from past cases. 14 Accordingly, it did not labor to elaborate the principles underlying any of the three parts of the doctrine. Yet while the five cases cited in Hunt as the basis of this synthesis, see 432 U.S. at 343, 97 S.Ct. at 2441, shed considerable light on the first prong of the associational standing test, and elucidate somewhat the third prong, they offer scant guidance on the second prong. None address the issue, critical here, of the relationship a representative group’s organic purpose must bear to the types of cases it may bring on behalf of its membership. 15

*55 Nor do the Court’s actions in these five cases amplify its thinking. The three cases denying standing —Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976); Sierra Club; and Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975)—do so on grounds wholly unrelated to organizational purpose. See note 15, supra. The two that find standing —Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U.S. 349, 95 S.Ct. 1753, 44 L.Ed.2d 217 (1975), and National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc. v. United States, 372 U.S. 246, 83 S.Ct. 688, 9 L.Ed.2d 709 (1963)—involved membership organizations whose litigation postures were not only germane, but involved the very core of their avowed purposes. Meek involved an establishment clause challenge by four civil libertarian groups to a parochial-school aid program, and National Motor Traffic involved a challenge by an association of motor carriers to an Interstate Commerce Commission ruling imposing direct burdens on motor carriers. The Court’s silence in these two cases about organizational germaneness apparently reflects the Justices’ belief that it was an easy issue, or even a nonissue.

Nor do the facts of Hunt itself shed any more light on the function or formidability of the germaneness requirement. In Hunt, the Court held that a state agency established to promote the state’s apple industry had standing to represent the interests of apple dealers and growers in challenging as an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce the highly restrictive regulations on apple marketing imposed by another state. In these circumstances, the Court understandably appeared to regard the germaneness inquiry as a mere formality. Disposing of the issue in a sentence, the Court wrote that the apple commission’s attempt to remedy its members’ injuries through litigation was not only germane, but “central to the Commission’s purpose of protecting and enhancing the market for Washington apples.” 432 U.S. at 344, 97 S.Ct. at 2442.

UAW v. Brock provides much more guidance. In UAW, the Court turned away a specific request that it reject the existing test for associational standing. That challenge was premised on the theory that the associational standing requirements set forth in Hunt inadequately guaranteed proper representation to the interests of association members, particularly when compared to the more stringent requirements guaranteeing adequate representation encoded in Fed.R.Civ.P. 23, governing class action certification. Justice Marshall’s opinion for the Court responded by strongly endorsing associational standing. It noted three “special features, advantageous to both the individuals represented and to the judicial system as a whole ... distinguishpng] suits by associations on behalf of their members from class actions.” 106 S.Ct. at 2532. Such organizations (1) “can draw upon a pre-existing reservoir of expertise and capital, ... [possessing] specialized expertise and research resources relating to the subject matter of the lawsuit that individual plaintiffs lack”; (2) attract members whose “primary reason” for joining is “often to create an effective vehicle for vindicating interests that they share with others”; and (3) possess a self-policing mechanism guaranteeing a modicum of fair representation: “[t]he very forces that cause individuals to band together in an association will thus provide some guarantee that the association will work to promote their interests.” Id. at 2532-33.

The Supreme Court’s recognition in UAW of these special advantages offered *56 by association suits signals to us the importance of a reading of the germaneness requirement that does not unduly confine the occasions on which associations may bring legal actions on behalf of members and thus significantly restrict the opportunities of associations to utilize their “specialized expertise and research resources” relating to the subject matter of the lawsuit. Id. at 2533. Too restrictive a reading of the requirement would undercut the interest of members who join an organization in order to effectuate “an effective vehicle for vindicating interests that they share with others.” Id. The third “special feature” of associations cited in UAW, their self-policing character, would seem to carry particular force on the germaneness issue. If the “forces that cause individuals to band together” guarantee some degree of fair representation, they surely guarantee as well that associational policymakers will not run roughshod over the strongly held views of association members in fashioning litigation goals. 16 Thus, in its rationale, UAW suggests that it is highly unlikely the second prong of germaneness was meant to set the narrow perimeter of centrality of purpose urged here. Rather, it would seem to require only that an organization’s litigation goals be pertinent to its special expertise and the grounds that bring its membership together. 17

This modest functional interpretation of the ge