Always makes me laugh when the clowns who hate the "administrative state" rant about the "unelected bureaucrats." The "unelected bureaucrats" in the "administrative state" at least answer to the political appointees of an elected official. That makes them answerable to the political process. That is not true of the unelected judiciary. Really lays bare that none of this is based in actual principle. Samuel Alito’s Assault on Wetlands Is So Indefensible That He Lost Brett Kavanaugh On Thursday, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to the nation’s wetlands by rewriting a statute the court does not like to mean something it does not mean. The court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA is one of the its most egregious betrayals of textualism in memory. Put simply: The Clean Water Act protects wetlands that are “adjacent” to larger bodies of water. Five justices, however, do not think the federal government should be able to stop landowners from destroying wetlands on their property. To close this gap between what the majority wants and what the statute says, the majority crossed through the word “adjacent” and replaced it with a new test that’s designed to give landowners maximum latitude to fill in, build upon, or otherwise obliterate some of the most valuable ecosystems on earth. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the court is remarkably brazen about this approach—so brazen that Justice Brett Kavanaugh (of all people!) authored a sharp opinion accusing him of failing to “stick to the text.” Alito began with a long history of the Supreme Court’s struggles to identify the “outer boundaries” of the Clean Water Act, as if to explain why the time had come for the court to give up wrestling with the text and just impose whatever standard it prefers. The law expressly protects “waters of the United States” (like rivers and lakes) as well as “wetlands adjacent” to these waters. Congress added the wetlands provision in 1977 to codify the EPA’s definition of “adjacent,” which also happens to be the actual definition: “bordering, contiguous, or neighboring.” Under that interpretation—the one Congress adopted—wetlands that neighbor a larger body of water remain protected, even if they aren’t directly connected. Why did Congress make that choice? Because wetlands provide immense environmental benefits: They filter and purify water draining into nearby streams, rivers, and lakes. They slow down runoff into these larger bodies. And they serve as vital flood control. In other words, the Clean Water Act has to protect “adjacent” wetlands to serve its overarching goal of safeguarding the broader “waters of the United States” from pollution. Too bad, Alito wrote: We don’t like the definition that Congress used. It could lead to “crushing” fines for landowners and interfere with “mundane” activities like “moving dirt.” It interferes with “traditional state authority.” And it could give the EPA “truly staggering” regulatory authority. Five justices on the Supreme Court think all of that is very bad. So they declared that, instead of applying the statute’s words, the court would impose a different standard: Only wetlands with “a continuous surface connection” to larger bodies of water merit protection under the Clean Water Act.
Even assuming Earth won't "die out" before we do, I think it could definitely become a worse place to live.
I am a skeptic by nature but the advances in science lately give me hope that it will become a better place if we can defeat tribalism
It's all outside of my wheelhouse. I do have concerns thinking about population growth, limited resources, all of the trash in the ocean, and the most dire of the climate change warnings. A lot of those could be problems way before we're talking anything extinction level. Migration alone is said to become a major problem with climate change. But I don't claim to understand the science.
Unless one of the advances of science is an end to capitalism and the fantasy of endless growth, might as well be thinking terraforming Mars
I don’t know all the specifics. There is little doubt that Alito swings from textualist to wildly activist depending on his particular personal belief in a particular issue. At the same time I have heard from farmers that the EPA wetland regulation was burdensome and too broad. I can’t possibly know where reality lies.
Farmers not liking the regulation is a policy issue for Congress or the Executive to solve. I'd also say that Alito is never a textualist. He's a politician who chooses whatever rationale gets him to his preferred outcome. Here, he chose to rewrite a statute because he didn't agree with what Congress did. In other words, unelected government bureaucrats stripped power away from the elected branches because they disagreed on policy.
Congress didn't change anything that resulted in the policy shift to claim wetlands not directly connected to navigable waters. That was an interpretation from the agency
The statute explicitly covers wetlands ADJACENT to waters of the United States. That is a change Congress made years after passing the Clean Water Act. The EPA has interpreted that language more broadly at times and more narrowly at times, depending on who was in the White House. Those sorts of enforcement decisions are the prerogatives of the President and his political appointees. It is why we have elections. But the word adjacent clearly covers more than just wetlands directly connected to navigable waters. In redefining the word "adjacent," Alito and his fellow Republicans chose to impose their policy preferences on the country, overrule Congress, and rewrite the statute. As even Brett Kavanaugh pointed out, they replaced the word "adjacent" with "adjoining," and those words have different meanings.
Nope that’s the narrative now. All or nothing. GOP wants dirty water and air. Women as second class citizens Minorities back on plantations.
