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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Administrative agency over reaches and gets slapped back 9-0.  No shock here.

Chevron deference is next.  [/quote]

It was 5-4. [/quote]

It was 9-0 in concluding that EPA overreached with respect to the litigants of the case. It was 9-0 to scrap the existing test used by EPA as an overreach.  It was 5-4 on which test would replace the now defunct test. [/quote]

From SCOTUSblog.com

The above really misrepresents the ruling

…Four justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed that the CWA does not apply to the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot, but they disagreed with the majority’s reasoning. In an opinion joined by the three liberal justices, Kavanaugh contended that “[b]y narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” For example, Kavanaugh noted, under the court’s new test, the wetlands on the other side of levees on the Mississippi River will not be covered by the CWA, even though they “are often an important part of the flood-control project” for the river. Moreover, Kavanaugh added, the court’s new test “is sufficiently novel and vague” that it will create precisely the kind of regulatory uncertainty that the majority criticized.

Instead, Kavanaugh would adopt a more expansive test, under which the CWA would apply to wetlands that are either next to a larger body of water or separated from such a body of water by a man-made or natural barrier, such as a dike or a beach dune. Because the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot “do not fall into either of those categories,” Kavanaugh agreed that they would still not be covered by the CWA.

Kagan also wrote a brief opinion of her own, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, in which she criticized what she characterized as “the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy.” In her view, Congress deliberately drafted the CWA with a broad reach to “address a problem of ‘crisis proportions.’” Although the majority disagrees with that decision, she wrote, it cannot “rewrite Congress’s plain instructions because they go further than” the court would like. But that is precisely what the majority did here, she concluded, just as it did last year when it curtailed the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

[/quote]

No, it doesn’t.

1.  All nine justices agreed that EPA overreached in regulating under the CWA the activity of the Sacket family.

2.  All nine justices agreed that the existing test for applicability of the CWA’s “adjacent” language needed to scrapped.

3.  5 justices agreed that “adjacent”would mean waters that are “adjoining”   navigable waters.  4 justices said this new understanding went too far in the other direction and adjoining means something different from adjacent under the CWA.

No matter which combo of 5 justices you put together, they agree that EPA went too far in this particular case. The only question was how far to dial the EPA back.

Imagine a scale of 1-10 with EPA interpreting CWA allowing it to regulate at a level 10 (maximum). All 9 said level 10 is beyond what CWA authorizes. The 5 controlling justices dialed EPA back to 5, while the 4 concurring justices may have dialed EPA back to 8. Either way, EPA’s authority was going to be significantly curtailed by this case, it was only a matter of how significantly.

Today is a great day and if people want EPA to regulate at a level 10, they can go through the political process of giving the EPA that authority.

On to the demise of Chevron deference next![/quote]

You're cheering on pollution? Yikes.[/quote]

You embrace tyranny?  Double yikes. [/quote]

They do.[/quote]

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