{"id":1297582,"date":"2023-05-25T15:10:55","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T19:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/biden-blasts-science-defying-supreme-court-ruling-against-epa-overreach\/1297582\/"},"modified":"2023-05-25T15:10:55","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T19:10:55","slug":"biden-blasts-science-defying-supreme-court-ruling-against-epa-overreach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/biden-blasts-science-defying-supreme-court-ruling-against-epa-overreach\/1297582\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Blasts ‘Science Defying’ Supreme Court Ruling Against EPA Overreach"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Biden Blasts ‘Science Defying’ Supreme Court Ruling Against EPA Overreach<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Update<\/strong><\/u>: As one might expect, the Biden administration is very upset at the nazi-fied Supreme Court for daring to reduce its power somewhat, claiming the decision “defies the science”…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Statement from President Joe Biden on Supreme Court Decision in Sackett v.EPA<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s disappointing decision in Sackett v. EPA will take our country backwards<\/strong>. It puts our Nation\u2019s wetlands – and the rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds connected to them – at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers, and businesses rely on.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the Clean Water Act was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress in 1972, it has been used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike to help ensure Americans in every state have clean water. It is the reason why today America\u2019s lakes arc swimmable, why we can fish in our streams and rivers, and why clean water comes out of our taps.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s decision upends the legal framework that has protected America\u2019s waters for decades. It also defies the science that confirms the critical role of wetlands in safeguarding our nation\u2019s streams, rivers, and lakes from chemicals and pollutants that harm the health and wellbeing of children, families, and communities.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I am committed to protecting clean air and water for our kids for generations to come. <\/strong>My team will work with the Department of Justice and relevant agencies to carefully review this decision and use every legal authority we have to protect our Nation\u2019s waters for the people and communities that depend on them. We will wrork with states, cities, and Tribal communities to pass and uphold critical protections for their residents. Through my Investing in America agenda, we\u2019re already deploying historic resources in communities all across America to remove lead pipes, improve water quality, and rebuild the Nation\u2019s drinking water infrastructure.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our fight for clean water for all must go on, and it will.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

As The Epoch Times’ Matthew Vadum detailed earlier,<\/a> the Supreme Court voted to rein in the power of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate wetlands in a\u00a0complex decision\u00a0issued on May 25, the\u00a0second time in a year that the court has curbed federal environmental\u00a0authority.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

All three liberal justices and one conservative justice expressed their opposition<\/strong> to the court\u2019s decision to adopt a new definition for wetlands.<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s high court ruled in favor of an Idaho couple who have been battling federal officials for years over the right to develop their own property.<\/p>\n

The ruling involved the controversial \u201cwaters of the United States\u201d rule that critics say has led to excessive, and at times, overzealous regulation of private lands by the EPA.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The couple\u2019s lawyer,\u00a0Damien Schiff of the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), said the ruling \u201creturns the\u00a0scope of the Clean Water Act\u00a0to its original and proper limits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cCourts now have a clear measuring stick for fairness and consistency by federal regulators. Today\u2019s ruling is a profound win for property rights and the constitutional separation of powers,\u201d <\/strong>Schiff said in a statement.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

EPA Administrator Michael Regan promptly denounced the ruling, saying it \u201cerodes longstanding clean water protections.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAs a public health agency, EPA is committed to ensuring that all people, regardless of race, the money in their pocket, or community they live in, have access to clean, safe water. We will never waver from that responsibility,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The case, Sackett v. EPA (court file 21-454), was argued on Oct. 3, 2022.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito.<\/p>\n

Agencies Ordered Work to Stop<\/h2>\n

Chantell and Mike Sackett had started building a new home in Priest Lake, Idaho, when the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers suddenly ordered them to stop all work.\u00a0The government agencies stated that the couple needed a federal permit and threatened them with more than $30,000 in daily fines.<\/p>\n

The EPA had determined years before that their parcel of land contained wetlands. The Sacketts say their lot lacks a surface water connection to any stream, creek, lake, or other water body, and it shouldn\u2019t be subject to federal regulation and permitting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though water isn\u2019t usually visible on their land, the government claims that, based on aerial photography, the lot is home to a fen wetland.<\/p>\n

Fens\u00a0are \u201cpeat-forming\u00a0wetlands\u00a0that rely on groundwater input and require thousands of years to develop and cannot easily be restored once destroyed,\u201d according to a USDA Forest Service report.<\/p>\n

They are \u201chotspots of biodiversity\u201d and \u201cfigure prominently in nearly all scenarios of CO2-induced global change because they are a major sink for atmospheric carbon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sacketts had asked the Supreme Court to revisit its 2006 ruling in Rapanos v. United States, which was a fractured plurality decision that created uncertainty about the applicable legal standard.<\/p>\n

Led by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, four of the nine justices found that the Clean Water Act (CWA) regulates a wetland only if it has a continuous surface connection to another waterway.<\/p>\n

Then-Justice\u00a0Anthony Kennedy devised his own legal test, finding that the law covers wetlands that have a \u201csignificant nexus\u201d to a larger body of water. The Biden administration argued for the nexus standard.<\/p>\n

In the Supreme Court\u2019s new opinion, all nine justices agreed that the Sackett\u2019s property didn\u2019t fall under the CWA, but only five agreed on a\u00a0new test to be used to determine when the statute applies to wetlands.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The majority rejected the nexus standard and endorsed the Rapanos standard that previously failed to garner majority support on the court.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito. That opinion was joined by four other conservative justices\u2014Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and John Roberts, the chief justice.<\/p>\n

In the opinion, Alito described the CWA, the principal federal law regulating water pollution in the United States, as \u201ca great success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBefore its enactment in 1972, many of the nation\u2019s rivers, lakes, and streams were severely polluted, and existing federal legislation had proved to be inadequate. Today, many formerly fetid bodies of water are safe for the use and enjoyment of the people of this country.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is, however, an unfortunate footnote to this success story: the outer boundaries of the Act\u2019s geographical reach have been uncertain from the start.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Act applies to \u2018the waters of the United States,\u2019 but what does that phrase mean? Does the term encompass any backyard that is soggy enough for some minimum period of time? Does it reach \u2018mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, [or] playa lakes?\u2019 How about ditches, swimming pools, and puddles?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Bumpy and Costly\u2019 Voyage<\/h2>\n

The Sacketts, Alito noted, \u201chave spent well over a decade navigating the CWA, and their voyage has been bumpy and costly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The EPA found that the so-called wetlands on their land were \u201cadjacent to\u201d an \u201cunnamed tributary\u201d on the other side of a 30-foot road. The tributary feeds into Priest Lake, a body of water the EPA has determined is traditionally navigable.<\/p>\n

To establish \u201ca significant nexus,\u201d the EPA lumped the Sacketts\u2019 lot together with the Kalispell Bay Fen, a large nearby wetland complex that the agency regarded as \u201csimilarly situated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAccording to the EPA, these properties, taken together, \u2018significantly affect\u2019 the ecology of Priest Lake. Therefore, the EPA concluded, the Sacketts had illegally dumped soil and gravel onto \u2018the waters of the United States.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A federal district court dismissed the Sacketts\u2019 lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act that claimed the EPA lacked jurisdiction because any wetlands on their land were not \u201cwaters of the United States,\u201d Alito wrote.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Court of Appeals for 9th Circuit affirmed finding the CWA \u201ccovers adjacent wetlands with a significant nexus to traditional navigable waters and that the Sacketts\u2019 lot satisfied that standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Supreme Court determined that the EPA overreached, finding that the CWA \u201cextends to only those \u2018wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own right,\u2019 so that they are \u2018indistinguishable\u2019 from those waters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe wetlands on the Sacketts\u2019 property are distinguishable from any possibly covered waters,\u201d Alito wrote.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Supreme Court remanded the case to the 9th Circuit \u201cfor further proceedings consistent with this opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the three liberal justices, along with conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, accused the majority of rewriting the Clean Water Act.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cToday\u2019s pop-up clear-statement rule is explicable only as a reflexive response to Congress\u2019 enactment of an ambitious scheme of environmental regulation,\u201d Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a statement.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an effort to cabin the anti-pollution actions Congress thought appropriate,\u201d Kagan wrote, a reference to the court\u2019s 6\u20133 ruling in June last year in\u00a0West Virginia\u00a0v. EPA<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In that case, the court held that the\u00a0Clean Air Act\u00a0doesn\u2019t give the EPA widespread power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions that a popular theory says contribute to global warming.<\/p>\n

In the West Virginia ruling, \u201cthe majority\u2019s non-textualism barred the EPA from addressing climate change by curbing power plant emissions in the most effective way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the current ruling, the same reasoning \u201cprevents the EPA from keeping our country\u2019s waters clean by regulating adjacent wetlands.\u201d<\/p>\n

In both, the court appointed \u201citself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,\u201d Kagan wrote.<\/p>\n

Her statement was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.<\/p>\n

Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a statement that he agreed with the majority that the nexus test should not be adopted, but said he disagreed with the test the majority actually adopted.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIn my view, the Court\u2019s \u2018continuous surface connection\u2019 test departs from the statutory text, from 45 years of consistent agency practice, and from this Court\u2019s precedents.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Court\u2019s \u201cnew and overly narrow test may leave long-regulated and long-accepted-to-be-regulable wetlands suddenly beyond the scope of the agencies\u2019 regulatory\u00a0\u00a0authority, with negative consequences for waters of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh specifically expressed concern that the new test could weaken CWA-based protection of the Mississippi River and Chesapeake Bay.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson joined Kavanaugh\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n

The new ruling may have an effect on ongoing litigation over wetlands regulations that the Biden administration unveiled late last year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two federal judges have reportedly issued injunctions temporarily preventing the regulations from taking effect in 26 states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 05\/25\/2023 – 17:40<\/span><\/p>\n

From:Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biden Blasts ‘Science Defying’ Supreme Court Ruling Against EPA Overreach Update: As one might expect, the Biden administration is very upset at the nazi-fied Supreme…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1297582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1297582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1297582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1297582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1297582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}