“In the Sackett case, all nine justices of the Supreme Court spoke up together and said enough is enough. Strong-arming can be a violation of constitutional rights – even if it is not a technical violation of the law.”
Gary Shapiro writes in the Washington Times:
… We can only hope this judicial rebuke of strong-arm regulators will extend beyond the EPA, as Obama administration regulators are consistently demonstrating the same kind of government strong-arming the EPA used in this case. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent 30 armed agents to raid a Tennessee Gibson guitar factory, taking inventory and property, apparently because some bureaucrat in a cubicle wrongly thought Gibson had violated another country’s laws, in spite of the fact that the other country, India, hadn’t been consulted. The National Labor Relations Board tried to give labor unions negotiating power by hassling the Boeing Co. for building a job-creating factory in South Carolina. Those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration has rushed through four times the amount of rules issued by the George W. Bush administration in the same amount of time…
What I cannot understand is the denial of a hearing by the EPA. Everything else makes sense from some perspective or another. However, the EPA denied a hearing, the ability to challenge an action. Their requirement to restore the land is extremely costly for an individual. The “wait until you are charged” method, while sensible for a criminal charge where the crime has been committed, makes no sense whatsoever when action is being demanded with an “or else” and a rapidly accumulating fine. It’s likely that the first day after the compliance order was issued, the amount of the fine was greater than the value of the land. If the EPA wished, they could levy a fine of millions against the Saketts, assuming they win on the wetlands determination (I admit, it would be interesting to request a jury trial and see the EPA try to explain how a lot in a subdivision can be retroactively determined to be protected wetlands).