The Miccosukee Tribe is a federally recognized Indian Tribe whose members reside and work within the Florida Everglades. The Southern Everglades Restoration Alliance (SERA) is a group organized and funded at least in part by certain federal agencies to assist themselves and other agencies in developing strategies for implementing restoration projects in the Everglades. The Tribe believes that the advice SERA has provided to federal agencies has caused continuing damage to tribal lands in the Everglades. As a result, the Tribe brought a lawsuit under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 5 U.S.CApp. 2 §§ 1 et. seq., seeking a declaratory judgment that SERA was an advisory committee within the meaning and coverage of the Act, that it was therefore subject to the requirements of the Act, and that SERA and its member agencies had failed to comply with those requirements, resulting in SERA’s actions being void. SERA is now defunct, but the Tribe also sought an injunction against the use of any of its advice and recommendations— what the Tribe calls SERA’s “work product” — by any of the agencies named as defendants. The named defendants, in addition to SERA itself and its former executive director, Lewis Hornung, included a number of federal agencies and officials who allegedly had participated in SERA or had relied on advice given by SERA in implementing restoration projects in the Everglades. 1
The district court, after finding that the Tribe had standing to bring the lawsuit, determined that although SERA did fall within the plain meaning of the statutory term “advisory committee,” it was not within the intended scope of FACA. That determination led to the district court’s conclusion that the Tribe had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. We disagree with the district court’s decision and reverse the judgment of dismissal as to virtually all of the defendants, affirming it only as to SERA itself and Hornung.
I. BACKGROUND
SERA ceased to exist sometime in 1999, but according to the complaint, in the 1990s SERA had been organized and funded by federal agencies to assist its members, both federal and state agencies, 2 in developing strategies for implementing restoration projects in the Florida Everglades. The SERA members collaborated to provide advice and recommendations for use in implementing various federal policies and programs dealing with the Everglades, including, for example, the Modified Water Deliveries Project, which was designed to restore more natural hydro- *1080 patterns in water conservation areas of the Everglades.
SERA failed to comply with some of the requirements of FACA, which governs the procedures certain committees established by the Executive branch must follow. For example, FACA requires notice of meetings of the committees or agencies it covers to be published in the Federal Register, see 5 U.S.CApp. 2 § 10(a)(2), and none of SERA’s meetings were.
The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim, or in the alternative, for summary judgment, contending, among other things, that the Tribe lacked standing to bring the lawsuit; that SERA was not governed by FACA because it did not meet that Act’s definition of “advisory committee” and did not fall within the Act’s purposes; and that even if SERA would otherwise have been within the scope of FACA, it was taken out by virtue of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, 2 U.S.C. §§ 1501 et. seq. After staying discovery, the district court granted the motion to dismiss the complaint, concluding that SERA was not a committee governed by FACA because, although it did meet the “plain language” of FACA’s statutory requirements as set forth in the definition of “advisory committee,” it did not fall within the spirit of the statute as revealed by its legislative history. The Tribe appealed.
II. DISCUSSION
A. STANDING
A threshold issue in this case is whether the Tribe has standing to seek the relief it is seeking under FACA. The district court believed that the Tribe had alleged a sufficiently concrete and redress-able injury to establish standing. Reviewing the issue
de novo, Florida Ass’n of Med. Equip. Dealers v. Apfel,
In order to establish standing, a plaintiff must allege (and eventually prove): (1) an injury in fact, which means harm to the plaintiff that is concrete and actual or imminent; (2) causation; and (3) redressability, which means a likelihood that the requested relief will redress the injury.
Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment,
The complaint alleges that SERA’s involvement in developing a plan for Everglades restoration, which included recommending an alternative plan to the Modified Water Deliveries Project (a water management plan authorized by Congress to protect tribal lands), had delayed the implementation of that congressional plan for restoration of the Everglades and had thereby damaged tribal lands. The complaint also alleges that continued reliance on SERA’s advice will result in decisions further delaying the implementation of the congressional project, which will in turn continue to damage the land that the Tribe relies on for its subsistence. See id.
The defendants contend that the Tribe has failed to show it has standing because: *1081 (1) the alleged injury is too general; (2) the Tribe has not adequately alleged the failure of SERA to follow the FACA procedures caused the damage to tribal lands which the Tribe asserts as its injury; and (3)a use injunction would not redress the claimed injury, because the complaint does not allege how SERA’s advice might be relied on in the future to cause harm, especially since SERA no longer exists. According to the defendants, in order to establish standing, the Tribe was required to plead specific facts describing the advice SERA had given that delayed implementation of the congressional plan, how that advice had influenced the final policy decision of the federal agency or agencies, and how the final decision had resulted in damage to tribal lands and would continue to damage them in the future.
If this case were at the summary judgment stage, and discovery had been conducted instead of stayed, we might agree with the defendants’ arguments.
See Lujan,
Taken as true for purposes of the motion to dismiss, the Tribe’s allegations of a past and
continuing
injury to its tribal lands allegedly caused by federal agencies’ actual and continuing rebanee on SERA’s recommendations that were arrived at in violation of FACA establishes injury in fact and causation for present purposes.
See Alabama-Tombigbee Rivers Coalition v. Dep’t of the Interior,
B. MOOTNESS
We agree with SERA and Hor-nung, however, that the Tribe’s claim for relief against them is moot. Hornung is no longer the executive director of SERA, and SERA no longer exists. A declaratory judgment and use injunction against the nonexistent SERA and against Hornung, who no longer holds the now non-existent position of SERA’s executive director, would afford the Tribe no meaningful relief.
See Dow Jones & Co., Inc. v. Kaye,
C. .THE MERITS
Congress enacted FACA in 1972 to reform the use of advisory committees by the Executive Branch. Specifically, the Act aims to reduce the number of unnecessary committees and to increase the uniformity of procedures for the committees that are necessary. 5 U.S.C.App. 2 § 2(b). To achieve its goal, FACA places a number of requirements on advisory committees. An “advisory committee” is defined in the Act as “any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group” that is “established or utilized” by the President or an agency “in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations” for one or more federal agencies or officers. 5 U.S.C.App. 2 § 3(2). 3 The requirements advisory committees have to meet include filing a détailed charter, giving advance notice in the Federal Register of any meetings, generally holding open meetings, having an officer or employee of the federal government preside over or attend every meeting, making records available to the public, and if the committee is established by legislation or created by the President or other federal official or agency, being “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed” and not being “inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest.” 5 U.S.CApp. 2 §§ 5, 9,10.
It is undisputed that SERA failed to operate in compliance with the requirements FACA imposed on advisory committees. The question is whether it was an advisory committee for FACA purposes. To answer that question, we look to the statute and the definition of “advisory committee” which Congress gave us to express its intent about the scope of that Act.
In FACA itself Congress said that it meant for the term “advisory committee” to include any (1) “committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group,” (2) “established or utilized” by the President or a federal agency 4 (3) “in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President or one or more agencies or officers of the Federal Government.” 5 U.S.CApp. 2 § 3(2). It is clear that, at least insofar as the allegations of the complaint are concerned, SERA fit within the plain meaning of the statutory definition of an advisory committee. In the words of the complaint, SERA was an “entity with federal, state, and other member agencies that was organized in the mid 1990’s by the federal defendants in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations and coordination regarding their respective activities,” especially the implementation of four water projects relating to the Everglades, and the federal defendants obtained such advice and recommendations from it. Complaint ¶ ¶ 7, 9, 11, 13-16.
The D.C. Circuit has said that in order to be an advisory committee for purposes of FACA’s definition, a “group” must have, “in large measure, an organized structure, a fixed membership, and a specific purpose” and must render advice or recommendations as a group, not as a collection
*1083
of separate individuals.
Ass’n of Am. Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. v. Clinton,
The Supreme Court has said that to be a FACA advisory committee an entity must have been established by statute, the President or a federal agency in order to provide advice to the federal government.
Public Citizen v. Dep’t of Justice,
The D.C. Circuit has taken the position that in order to qualify as a group established to provide “advice or recommendations,” within the meaning of FACA, the entity also must have been created to provide advice or recommendations with regard to specific government policy and not merely to facilitate an exchange of ideas and information or simply to be an “operational” committee.
See Sofamor Danek Group, Inc. v. Gaus,
The district court determined that even though the plain language of FACA covers SERA, that language is trumped by what the court perceived to be the core concern behind the enactment of FACA — protecting government decision making from the undue influence of
special interests.
Relying primarily on
Public Citizen v. Dep’t of Justice,
That reasoning is replete with errors and the conclusion it reaches is wrong. To begin with, it is not even clear to us that the complaint fails to allege SERA included private groups. The complaint says in one place that SERA was composed of “federal, state, and other member agencies” and in another place refers to it as made up of “federal and non-federal participants and consultants.” Complaint *1084 ¶ ¶ 7, 48 (emphasis added). At worst, this language is ambiguous (“other” and “consultants” could mean local government, or they could mean private groups or parties), and because the court was ruling on a motion to dismiss, the complaint should be construed in the light most favorable to the Tribe — it should have been interpreted to include allegations of private party involvement in SERA. That error really is not essential to our conclusion, however, because putting aside that case-specific factual concern, there are legal flaws in the court’s reasoning.
The district court relied primarily on the Supreme Court’s decision in
Public Citizen,
but that case involved a different issue entirely, and much of the reasoning contained in the
Public Citizen
opinion actually runs counter to the district court’s conclusion. For one thing,
Public Citizen
does not establish, as the district court thought, that the sole or principal purpose of FACA was to protect government decision making from the influence of special interests. To the contrary, what the Supreme Court said was that “FACA’s principal purpose was to enhance the public accountability of advisory committees established by the Executive Branch and to reduce wasteful expenditures on them.”
Public Citizen,
Nor does the holding of
Public Citizen
otherwise support the position that FACA did not cover SERA. FACA’s definition of advisory committee speaks in terms of entities or groups that are either “established or utilized by one or more agencies” for the purpose of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President or other federal officials or agencies. 5 U.S.C.App. 2 § 3(2).
Public Citizen
was not a case dealing with the meaning of the “established” alternative but instead dealt exclusively with the “utilized” alternative. The Supreme Court concluded that FACA did not apply to the Justice Department’s solicitation of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary’s views on prospective judicial nominees, because that private committee was not “utilized” within the meaning of the statutory definition of an advisory committee by the President or by the Department of Justice in connection with their evaluations of the judicial nominees.
Public Citizen,
Of course, even when the direct, narrow holding of a judicial decision does not fit the case at hand, we may obtain guidance by borrowing the decision’s reasoning, extrapolating from its result, and using it as an analogy. The guidance that can be obtained from
Public Citizen
points toward the conclusion that the word “established” in the statutory phrase “established or utilized” should be given its plain meaning. In refusing to give the word “utilized” its plain meaning, which would
*1085
have meant that privately organized committees like the ABA one involved in
Public Citizen
were covered, the Supreme Court emphasized that, “FACA’s principal purpose was to enhance the public accountability of advisory committees established by the Executive Branch and to reduce wasteful expenditures on them,” which “could be accomplished ... without ... including] privately organized committees.”
There is even more specific guidance than that in
Public Citizen
about how “established ... by one or more agencies” should be read. The Supreme Court actually contrasted the more narrow and non-literal meaning that was to be given to the word “utilized” with the broader and literal meaning that should be given to the word “established.” It examined legislative history and reached the conclusion that when the legislation reached the Conference Committee, the House bill’s initial “focus on advisory committees established by the Federal Government, in an expanded sense of the word ‘established,’ was retained.”
Id.
at 462,
There is nothing in the reasoning of the
Public Citizen
opinion to support the conclusion that advisory committees established by federal agencies are not covered by FACA unless they have private individual or group members the inclusion of which threatens to infect the proceedings of government with the influence of external special interests. To construe the statutory word “established” in that restrictive, artificial way runs counter to the teachings of the
Public Citizen
that “established” was used “in an expanded sense of the word,” and “in a generous sense,” and the word should be applied with a “broad understanding” in order to encompass all such committees formed directly or indirectly by the federal government or its agencies.
Id.
at 462-63,
Not only that, but the Supreme Court explained its restrictive reading of “utilized” was motivated by a desire to avoid the serious constitutional question that would have been presented if that term had been read to include all privately organized groups.
See id.
at 465-67,
The
Public Citizen
decision does not give lower courts license not to apply the plain meaning doctrine of statutory interpretation. There is, to be sure, language in the opinion that might give that impression,
see id.
at 453-55,
The Court could not believe Congress intended the result that giving a plain meaning interpretation to the word “utilized” would have brought about and viewed the plain meaning of the word as ealhng for an odd result that could be labeled absurd.
Id.
at 454-55 & n. 9,
Any idea that
Public Citizen
went beyond the absurdity exception and marked a permanent retreat from the plain meaning rule is dispelled by decisions of the Supreme Court since
Public Citizen
in which the Court has reinstated plain meaning to a position of primacy in the pantheon of statutory construction canons. Just three years after that decision, the Supreme Court emphatically stated that “in interpreting a statute a court should
*1087
always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others,” and defined that rule as being “that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there,” so that “[w]hen the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: judicial inquiry is complete.”
Connecticut Nat’l Bank v. Germain,
In between the
Germain
decision and the
Barnhart
decision there has also been a host of other decisions which leaves no doubt that, any intimation in
Public Citizen
to the contrary notwithstanding, unambiguous language in a statute is more than mere evidence of what Congress intended the law to be — it is the law.
See, e.g., United States v. LaBonte,
The plain meaning rule still rules statutory construction, and it compels our conclusion in this case: SERA is an advisory committee within the meaning of FACA, because it was “established ... by one or more agencies, in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations.” The district court should not have dismissed the complaint on the theory that FACA did not apply to SERA as it is described in the allegations of the complaint. 5
*1088 III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we disagree with the district court that the complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Therefore, we REVERSE and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion, except that we AFFIRM the dismissal as to defendants SERA and Hornung.
Notes
. The federal agencies named as defendants are the United States Department of the Interior; the Everglades National Park; Richard Ring, in his official capacity as Superintendent of Everglades National Park; the United States Fish and Wildlife Service; Steven For-sythe, in his official capacity as State Supervisor of Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service; the United States Army Corps of Engineers; and James G. May, Colonel, in his official capacity as District Engineer for the Corps of Engineers.
. It is unclear from the complaint whether any private parties or agencies were members of SERA. The federal agencies participating in SERA included the Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service, while the state agencies included the South Florida Water Management District and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It appears from the complaint that these agencies were directly responsible for implementing programs dealing with restoration of the Everglades.
. FACA does exempt from its definition of advisory committee "any committee ... composed wholly of full-time officers or employees of the Federal Government.” 5 U.S.C.App. 2 § 3(2). Both .sides agree that SERA does not fit within that exemption.
. FACA’s definition also covers otherwise qualifying entities that are established by statute or reorganization plan, 5 U.S.C.App. 2 § 3(2)(A), but that alternative is not involved in this case.
. The defendants also contend that SERA is taken out of the scope of FACA's coverage by the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, 2 U.S.C. §§ 1501 et. seq., which was enacted by Congress in 1995 to curb the imposition of unfunded federal mandates on state and local governments. That Act explicitly excludes from FACA's coverage meetings between federal officials and elected state, local, and tribal officials (acting in their official capacities) if those meetings are held solely for the purpose of "exchanging views, information, or advice relating to the management or implementation of Federal programs established pursuant to public law that explicitly or inherently share intergovernmental responsibilities or administration.” 2 U.S.C. § 1534(b). The district court did not decide this issue and neither do we, preferring to leave it to the district court in the first instance. Of course, if the district court considers materials beyond the allegations of the complaint in deciding this issue, it will need to comply with the last sentence of Rule 12(b).