A federal appeals court has rejected the Bush administration effort to exempt Navy sonar training from key environmental laws, backing up a lower court that imposed extensive safeguards to protect whales and dolphins from harmful sonic blasts.
Even so, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gave the Navy a 30-day reprieve from the most far-reaching protections -- such as shutting down sonar when whales are spotted within 2,200 yards -- so it could conduct a pair of training missions this month off Southern California and to give it time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The Navy is carefully considering additional review, including possible review by the Supreme Court," Lt. Cmdr. Cindy Moore said Saturday. Once the monthlong reprieve ends, the Navy spokeswoman said, the ruling "leaves in place significant restrictions on our ability to train realistically."
The decision, released late Friday night, is the latest in a string of legal defeats for the Navy in Los Angeles and Hawaii as it tries to avoid court-ordered restraints on how it trains sailors to hunt for submarines with a type of sonar that has been linked to the death of whales and dolphins.
The cases pit the interests of national security and troop readiness against the enforcement of environmental laws and the safeguarding of federally protected marine mammals.
The case in Los Angeles has taken on additional overtones of a constitutional struggle between the judicial and administrative branches of government.
After losing repeatedly in court, the Navy persuaded President Bush and the White House to exempt its Southern California training missions from the environmental laws that underlie the case.
Calling it "constitutionally suspect," U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles rebuffed this legal maneuvering and concluded that the Navy's long-planned schedule for eight more training missions this year did not warrant "emergency" arrangements invoked by the White House to get around the law.
The appeals court late Friday backed up Cooper's decision, ruling that she "carefully balanced the significant interests and hardships at stake to ensure that the Navy could continue to train without causing undue harm to the environment."
A three-judge panel said it reviewed "with the utmost care" the classified affidavits submitted by various admirals about how the training exercises are needed to certify a sufficient number of aircraft carrier strike groups as ready for battle in the Persian Gulf and other hot spots.
