The Supreme Court weakened protections in the Clean Water Act Thursday, a ruling that narrows what wetlands are protected under the law, which environmental advocates warn could have wide-reaching environmental impacts and lead nearly half of the country’s wetlands to be open to pollutants.
A rally to call for protection of the Clean Water Act outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on October ... [+]
Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency was brought by an Idaho couple who has been in a years-long dispute over building property on their land, which the federal government has said they cannot do without a permit because the land is a wetland protected under the Clean Water Act.
The justices ruled unanimously that the couple had the right to build on their land, but was split 5-4 when it came to the Clean Water Act more broadly, with a conservative majority of justices narrowing the scope of the law.
The Clean Water Act, a landmark law enacted in 1972 that established water quality standards and regulated pollutants, protects “the waters of the United States,” but the court ruled that only applies to wetlands if they’re adjoining “traditional navigable waters” like rivers, oceans, streams and lakes.
The court’s three liberal justices and Justice Brett Kavanaugh disagreed, with Kavanaugh writing in a concurrent opinion that the new definition of what’s protected under the Clean Water Act “departs from the statutory text, from 45 years of consistent agency practice, and from this Court’s precedents.”
The new test will remove protections from many wetlands that have long been regulated, Kavanaugh wrote, “with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.