This had nothing to do with Trump. It was the county of Maui vs Hawaii wildlife fund.
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Yesterday the Supreme Court released three more decisions. In County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, the court held 6-3 that a Clean Water Act permit is required for either a direct discharge of pollutants into navigable waters or its functional equivalent. Lisa Heinzerling analyzes the opinion for this blog. At Bloomberg Law, Ellen Gilmer and Amena Saiyid report that “[t]he decision narrows an environmentalist-favored standard an appellate court adopted in 2018, but rejects the industry-preferred approach that would have exempted all indirect pollution from Clean Water Act permitting requirements.” Adam Liptak reports for The New York Times that “the decision was on balance a victory for environmental groups, as it allowed at least some lawsuits over groundwater discharges.” At Foley Hoag’s Law & the Environment blog, Seth Jaffe writes that the court found “a workable middle ground that avoids eviscerating the statute without subjecting untold number of groundwater discharges to CWA jurisdiction.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]
Opinion analysis: The justices’ purpose-full reading of the Clean Water ActBy Lisa Heinzerling on Apr 23, 2020 at 7:09 pm
Today the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the Clean Water Act requires a permit when a point source of pollution adds pollutants to navigable waters through groundwater, if this addition of pollutants is “the functional equivalent of a direct discharge” from the source into navigable waters. Because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit applied a different legal test in determining that a permit was required for a sewage treatment facility operated by the County of Maui, the Supreme Court vacated the 9th Circuit’s judgment and remanded the case for application of the standard announced today.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Justice Stephen Breyer’s opinion for the majority – which drew the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as well as those of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – is its interpretive method. The opinion reads like something from a long-ago period of statutory interpretation, before statutory decisions regularly made the central meaning of complex laws turn on a single word or two and banished legislative purpose to the interpretive fringes.
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Posted in County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Featured, Merits Cases |
