stepped in with a decision that will hopefully curb bureaucratic overreach and signal that other regulations never passed by Congress will similarly be tossed in the wastebasket.
The Sacketts drew attention from the EPA because their property was across the street from a tributary so small it was not named. That tributary fed into a small non-navigable creek. That non-navigable creek fed into Priest Lake. Because the EPA has jurisdiction over “lakes” under the Clean Water Act, the EPA felt that it could punish the Sacketts if they backfilled the foundation of their house.
The Supreme Court rightly drew a line on the limits of what can be considered a “water” under the statute. It stated that for the EPA to have jurisdiction, the water must be “indistinguishable” from the waters of the U.S., in this case Priest Lake, which means there must be “continuous surface connection.
The court also touched upon another significant area that reaches well beyond the EPA. There are more thanfederal rules and regulations that bear criminal consequences. These de facto laws never passed through Congress. Our elected representatives often never consider them, let alone vote them into law. Rather, unelected bureaucrats wrote and quietly passed them using a rule-making process that too few people notice or follow.
Curtis Schube is the executive director for the Council to Modernize Governance, a think tank committed to making the administration of government more efficient, representative, and restrained. He is formerly a constitutional and administrative law attorney.
Law Law Latest News, Law Law Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: dcexaminer - 🏆 6. / 94 Read more »