Bonin v. Sabine River Authority

── Bonin v. Sabine River Authority ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Date: May 07, 2026 Category: Civil Rights Case: 25-40410 Document: 64-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/07/2026 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals ____________ Fifth Circuit FILED No. 25-40410 May 7, 2026 ____________ Lyle W. Cayce Clerk Perry Bonin; Ace Chandler; Michael Manuel; Robert Acreman; Jacqueline Acreman, Et al., Plaintiffs—Appellants, versus Sabine River Authority of Texas; Sabine River Authority, State of Louisiana, Defendants—Appellees. ______________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas USDC No. 1:19-CV-527 ______________________________ Before King, Southwick, and Haynes, Circuit Judges. Leslie H. Southwick, Circuit Judge: On March 9, 2016, in response to a record-breaking storm, the Toledo Bend Dam opened nine of its eleven spillways into the Sabine River. The Plaintiffs in this case, 700 downriver landowners flooded during the storm, brought a takings claim against the operators of the dam and sought compensation for damage done to their property by the high waters. The Case: 25-40410 Document: 64-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/07/2026 No. 25-40410 district court granted summary judgment for the Defendants. The Plaintiffs timely appealed. We AFFIRM. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND The course of the Sabine River demarcates more than half of the border between Texas and Louisiana. Toledo Bend Dam, built as a collaboration between Louisiana and Texas, restricts the Sabine, forming the Toledo Bend Reservoir, the largest non-federal reservoir in the country. Ryan M. Seidemann, Water and Power: The Sabine River Authority of Louisiana, 25 TULANE ENV’T L.J. 389, 391 (2012). Two state entities jointly manage the Toledo Bend Reservoir: the Sabine River Authority of Texas (“SRA-T”) and the Sabine River Authority, State of Louisiana (“SRA-L”). We will refer to them collectively as “the Authorities.” Flowing south from the reservoir, the Sabine River eventually empties into an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico. SRA-T and SRA-L are co-licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) to operate and maintain the Toledo Bend Hydroelectric Project, which includes the dam and spillways at issue in this case. The two Authorities received their first license to construct, operate, and maintain the Project in 1953. FERC issued a second license to the Authorities in 2014. In March 2016, Toledo Bend Reservoir suffered a period of intense rainfall, with areas receiving between 20 and 25 inches of rain over a 31-hour period. According to a post-incident report, the inflows of water into the reservoir exceeded “the equivalent of a 500-year flood.” To avoid “overtopping” of the dam, which can “ultimately lead to failure of the dam,” the Authorities incrementally opened all nine operational spillways, releasing water from the reservoir into the Sabine River. The spillways did not fully 2  Case: 25-40410 Document: 64-1 Page: 3 Date Filed: 05/07/2026 No. 25-40410 close until more than three weeks later. Flooding downriver of the dam caused widespread damage in areas along the Sabine River. The Plaintiffs, over seven hundred l