Here’s an in-depth look at Antonin Scalia’s influence on environmental issues from Elizabeth Shogren writing for The High Country News. Click through and read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt:
During Justice Antonin Scalia’s tenure on the Supreme Court, a conservative California-based legal foundation had six straight victories on property rights and Clean Water Act cases. The decisions bolstered private property owners’ ability to develop their land and restricted federal authority to protect waters and wetlands from being polluted or filled in. In the Pacific Legal Foundation’s biggest wins, the justices were split, 5-4 or 4-1-4. Scalia’s vote was essential for the firm’s favorable outcomes. With Scalia’s death last weekend, the Pacific Legal Foundation lost a powerful ally who showed deep enthusiasm for their cases, and who often took the role of writing the court’s decisions in their favor. “I do think it’s less likely that the Court will adopt additional restrictions” on the Clean Water Act, says Damien Schiff, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation.
Scholars say Pacific Legal Foundation is justifiably concerned. “If you lose Scalia, there’s nothing subtle about that change,” says Richard Lazarus, a Harvard Law School professor and expert in environmental and natural resource law and the Supreme Court. Scalia was deeply skeptical about a broad interpretation of the Clean Water Act and greatly concerned about private property rights. “There was no one more forceful than Justice Scalia; a very powerful voice is now missing from the bench,” Lazarus adds.
In his opinion in the 2006 Clean Water Act case known as Rapanos, one of the Pacific Legal Foundation’s biggest triumphs, Scalia criticized “the immense expansion of federal regulation of land use that has occurred under the Clean Water Act — without any change in the governing statute — during the past five Presidential administrations.”
Scalia’s death dims the Pacific Foundation’s chances in a major environmental case on the horizon. The Supreme Court is expected to eventually review Obama’s Clean Water Rule, which has been stayed by a lower court. Significantly for the arid West, the rule would protect tributaries, no matter how frequently water flows in them, as well as some wetlands, ponds and ditches. “With Justice Scalia’s departure, it’s fair to say it’s more likely to be upheld,” Schiff says. “The impacts will be principally in the West. It’s precisely in the areas that are dry most of the year that you have the most significant disputes about the Clean Water Act.”