Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U.S. 49 (1987)
Gwaltney of Smithfield v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation is a cornerstone of environmental citizen-suit jurisprudence under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
Does the Clean Water Act's citizen-suit provision, 33 U.S.C. § 1365(a), authorize private plaintiffs to sue for civil penalties based solely on wholly past violations, or must the plaintiff allege an ongoing or intermittent violation at the time the complaint is filed?
Under the Clean Water Act's citizen-suit provision, a citizen may commence an action "against any person ... who is alleged to be in violation" of an effluent standard or limitation, 33 U.S.C. § 1365(a). The present-tense phrase "to be in violation" requires an allegation of ongoing or intermittent (continuing) noncompliance at the time suit is filed; suits based solely on wholly past violations are not authorized. Jurisdiction at the pleading stage is satisfied by a good-faith allegation of continuous or intermittent violations, but to prevail on the merits, plaintiffs must prove that violations were ongoing or reasonably likely to recur when the complaint was filed.
No. The Clean Water Act does not authorize citizen suits for wholly past violations. The statute requires that the defendant be "in violation" when the suit is filed, meaning there must be an ongoing or intermittent violation. However, jurisdiction attaches if the complaint makes a good-faith allegation of continuous or intermittent noncompliance.
Gwaltney is the seminal case defining the temporal scope of environmental citizen suits under the Clean Water Act. It requires careful timing and pleading: plaintiffs must allege ongoing or intermittent violations at filing and ultimately prove continuing noncompliance or a realistic prospect of recurrence to obtain relief. The decision preserves the complementary role of citizen enforcement while preventing private penalty actions for purely historical misconduct. Gwaltney also informs practice under other environmental statutes with similar citizen-suit language and sets the stage for later decisions, such as Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw, clarifying mootness and remedies where violations cease after suit is filed.