Antonin Scalia has little patience for government reassurances.
At today’s Supreme Court argument on the Sacketts’ wetland case, Politico reports,
Key issues in oral arguments centered in part about how EPA’s compliance order was written: EPA leaves the possibility open of $37,500 in fines a day for violating the compliance order, and the same amount for violating the Clean Water Act — double the fines laid out in the act.
As a practical matter, that never happens, DOJ attorney [Malcolm] Stewart said [to the Supreme Court].
“I’m not going to bet my house on that,” responded Scalia.
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To get the federal authority the EPA must be regulating “navigable waters” under wording of the Constitution. Former activist rulings by SCOTUS have held everything from pig-wallow pits to water-lilly ponds are “navigable,” thus these fictions give the zealots at a predatory EPA virtual unbridled power over your land if they want to exercise it… and they do. These basic former rulings must be revisited before arcane procedural questions about “how to appeal an administrative order” is considered.
What, you mean property owners have rights????????