In a story from the Washington Post today about an important case with two clearly divided sides, one represented by Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, the Supreme Court came down in the middle (probably the best place to be) and for the foreseeable future, cases around this law will have to be decided on a case by case basis; again, probably a very good thing.
Here is an excerpt.
Justices Rein In Clean Water Act
Still-Divided Court Leaves Reach of The Law Unclear
By Charles Lane Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 20, 2006; A01
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that new limits could be placed on the federal government's power to enforce the 34-year-old Clean Water Act, but a set of opinions handed down by the justices did little to define what those limits might be.
The splintered decision was the clearest sign yet that the court's long-standing ideological divisions have not disappeared with the addition of two conservative justices. It also underscored that, perhaps more than ever, forming a majority in significant cases depends on winning the vote of a single justice -- moderate conservative Anthony M. Kennedy.
In yesterday's ruling, a five-justice majority agreed that the Army Corps of Engineers, the lead federal agency on wetlands regulation, exceeded its authority when it denied two Michigan developers permits to build on wetlands. The court said the Corps had gone beyond the Clean Water Act by making landowners obtain permits to dump rocks and dirt not only in marshes directly next to lakes and rivers but also in areas linked to larger bodies of water only through a network of ditches and drains.
But there was no clear majority as to where the Corps should have drawn the line, with a four-justice plurality made up of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. arguing for an across-the-board reduction in the Corps' regulatory role but Kennedy rejecting that view and calling for a case-by-case approach.
The net effect of the most important Clean Water Act case to reach the court in recent years was thus neither the outright rollback of federal wetlands regulation that property rights advocates have long sought nor the reaffirmation of the Clean Water Act that environmental organizations had desired.
Instead, unless Congress amends the law or federal regulators change their rules, the likely outcome is more litigation in lower courts, with property owners, U.S. agencies and federal judges trying to figure out how to satisfy the standards sketched in Kennedy's solo opinion.
