A Supreme muddle

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

A sharply divided Supreme Court this week came close to overturning a major environmental law, setting the scene for additional battles over federal wetlands protection. In a case testing the reach of the Clean Water Act, four conservative justices said the government may only block development on wetlands found to have a “continuous surface connection” to a body of water. Four liberal justices said that standard would gut enforcement of wetland laws. With the court split down the middle, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the controlling opinion, which sent the case back to federal agencies with the guidance that wetlands should have a “significant nexus” with waterways to justify federal intervention. Environmentalists said they had “dodged a bullet.” But Chief Justice John Roberts, part of the conservative wing, wrote that in the wake of the muddled decision, “lower courts and regulated entities will have to feel their way forward on a case-by-case basis.”