It is not often that the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court issue a unanimous decision, but they did last week. In pushing back against regularity overreach by the Biden administration, the Supreme Court returned the Clean Water Act to its original purpose and restored federalism.
The
case involved Chantell and Mike Sackett who purchased some new property in
Priest Lake, Idaho, to build a home and began backfilling the land in preparation
for doing so in 2004. The Environmental Protection Agency determined that the construction
work on the land was affecting the “waters of the United States.”
According
to Rachel Wilfong at The Daily Signal, the construction activity by the Sacketts
was “discharging pollutants into surrounding wetlands that the agency deemed to
be ‘waters of the United States’ and therefore subject to federal regulation.”
The fine was upwards of $40,000 per day until the site was restored to its original
state. Wilfong continued with this explanation:
The Clean Water Act is a federal statute
that allows the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to regulate “navigable
waters.” In the past, both the EPA and Corps have attempted to introduce vague
interpretations of these waters, which delivered the Washington bureaucracy a
perfect opportunity to expand its power.
Luckily for all Americans, the Supreme
Court ruled May 25 in favor of the Sacketts. The high court issued a judgment
in Sackett v. EPA in line with the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s plurality
opinion in a separate major Clean Water Act case, Rapanos v. United States.
Scalia’s opinion in that 2006 case held that the term “waters of the United
States” can refer only to “relatively permanent, standing, or flowing bodies of
water,” and “does not include channels through which water flows intermittently
or ephemerally or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.”
At the time Scalia’s opinion didn’t have
the necessary five votes to achieve a majority of the nine justices.
Until last week, that is, when the Supreme
Court honored the plurality by determining in Sackett v. EPA that the use of “waters”
in the Clean Waters Act “refers only to ‘geographic[al] features that are
described in ordinary parlance as “streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes” and to
adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due
to a continuous surface connection.”
In other words, the Supreme Court provided
a succinct definition of “waters” under the Clean Water Act, providing a legal
defense for rolling back federal overreach….
Until now, pushing back against the Biden
administration’s draconian interpretations of the Clean Water Act, as well as those
of previous administrations, has been an upstream battle.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v.
EPA is a major step in the right direction for common sense, states’ rights,
and private property rights. It could provide a legal precedent for fighting
other instances of the EPA’s overreach.
Democrats
and the EPA are upset with the ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. We can
expect more calls to pack the Supreme Court with more justices because the
justices currently there are following the law and common sense.