{"id":1938063,"date":"2023-05-25T16:45:09","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T20:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-decision-repeals-wetlands-protections-from-clean-water-act\/"},"modified":"2023-05-25T16:50:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T20:50:35","slug":"supreme-court-decision-repeals-wetlands-protections-from-clean-water-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-decision-repeals-wetlands-protections-from-clean-water-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court ends Clean Water Act&#8217;s Wetlands Protections."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsupreme-court-decision-repeals-wetlands-protections-from-clean-water-act%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1938063&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Supreme Court Removes Protections from Wetlands<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The US Supreme Court is seen in Washington DC on May 25, 2023. The Supreme Court ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency in a dispute over its authority to regulate some wetlands under the Clean Water Act.  (Photo by MANDEL NGAN\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>OAN\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/tag\/brooke-mallory\">Brooke Mallory<\/a><br \/>1:25 PM \u2013 Thursday, May 25, 2023<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court came to a decision on Thursday, which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doctors-sue-california-for-threatening-to-punish-them-for-not-facilitating-assisted-suicide\/\" title=\"Doctors Sue California for Threatening to Punish Them for Not Facilitating Assisted Suicide\">removes protections<\/a> from wetlands that are cut off from larger bodies of water, making it more difficult for the federal government to control water pollution.<\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1663871513696-art-1\" style=\"min-width: 320px; min-height: 50px;  text-align: center;\">\n  <script>googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1663871513696-art-1'); });<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ad-slot__ad-label\">Advertisement<\/div>\n<p>The High Court\u2019s Republican majority has limited the applicability of environmental regulations for the second time in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>The court ruled in favor of an Idaho couple who desired to construct a home close to Priest Lake, in the state\u2019s panhandle, boosting property rights over concerns regarding clean water. Federal officials had declared a soggy area of the property as a wetland and demanded that they obtain a permit before construction, however, Chantell and Michael Sackett opposed this request.<\/p>\n<p>In a 5-4 decision, the court stated that wetlands can only be subject to the Clean Water Act\u2019s regulations if they have a \u201ccontinuous surface connection\u201d to larger regulated bodies of water. Such a connection did not exist on the Sacketts\u2019 property.<\/p>\n<p>The court dismissed Anthony Kennedy\u2019s 17-year-old ruling, which had allowed regulation of wetlands with a \u201csignificant nexus\u201d to larger waterways. Kennedy\u2019s ruling had served as the benchmark for determining whether wetlands were covered by the historic environmental law of 1972. The standard was criticized by opponents for being both ambiguous and impracticable.<\/p>\n<p>Environmentalists predicted that by limiting the law\u2019s application, more than half of the nation\u2019s wetlands would lose their protections.<\/p>\n<h3>Reaction to the Decision<\/h3>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>\u201cThe Supreme Court ripped the heart out of the law we depend on to protect American waters and wetlands. The majority chose to protect polluters at the expense of healthy wetlands and waterways. This decision will cause incalculable harm. Communities across the country will pay the price,\u201d said Manish Bapna, the CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>All nine judges concurred in the decision on Thursday that the wetlands on the Sacketts\u2019 property are not protected by the legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Only five justices, however, came to an agreement in the opinion that established a new standard for determining whether wetlands are subject to the Clean Water Act. In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-decision-repeals-wetlands-protections-from-clean-water-act\/\" title=\"Supreme Court ends Clean Water Act's Wetlands Protections.\">final significant wetlands case<\/a> before the Supreme Court in 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Alito would have embraced the more stringent criteria. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joined them on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The three Democrat justices on the court and the Republican justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed that their colleagues had changed the law.<\/p>\n<p>The court\u2019s \u201cnew and overly narrow test may suddenly push wetlands that have been long regulated and accepted to be regulable outside the agencies\u2019 regulatory authority,\u201d according to Kavanaugh.<\/p>\n<p>He named two initiatives that would be affected by the decision, including efforts to protect Chesapeake Bay and to manage flooding on the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n<p>The majority\u2019s rewrite of the law, according to Justice Elena Kagan, was \u201can effort to cabin the anti-pollution actions Congress thought appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kagan had referred to the ruling from the previous year that restricted the Clean Air Act\u2019s ability to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-epa-decision-met-with-mixed-reactions\/\" title=\"Supreme Court EPA decision met with mixed reactions\">regulate greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>She noted that the court had appointed \u201citself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy.\u201d Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, two of Kagan\u2019s Democrat colleagues, contributed to her article.<\/p>\n<h3>The Sacketts\u2019 Legal Battle<\/h3>\n<p>Two years after purchasing a 0.63-acre plot of land close to Priest Lake for $23,000, the Idaho-based Sacketts duo began construction on a three-bedroom house. In order to prepare for the construction, they had filled a portion of the property, which was described in an appellate judgement as a \u201csoggy residential lot,\u201d with rocks and soil. However, when EPA representatives arrived, the couple immediately stopped the work.<\/p>\n<p>The Idaho pair also won an earlier stage of their Supreme Court legal battle.<\/p>\n<p>The EPA\u2019s judgment that a portion of the property constituted wetland, 300 feet from the lake and 30 feet from an unidentified river that drains into the lake, was upheld by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/federal-court-is-fast-tracking-sidney-powells-request-for-a-forensic-exam-of-dominion-voting-machines\/\" title=\"Federal Court Is Fast-Tracking Sidney Powell\u2019s Request For A Forensic Exam Of Dominion Voting Machines\">federal appeals court<\/a> in San Francisco in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, years before, the Sacketts\u2019 own consultant had reportedly informed them that their property had wetlands.<\/p>\n<p>Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/alerts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.oann.com\/alerts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ruled against the EPA&#8217;s authority to regulate certain wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The decision was made in Washington DC on May 25, 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1866,"featured_media":1938064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[18822,4483,4733,8822,4730,5994,21163],"class_list":["post-1938063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oann","tag-acts","tag-clean","tag-court","tag-protections","tag-supreme","tag-water","tag-wetlands"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1866"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1938063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1938064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1938063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1938063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1938063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}