The role the courts have assumed in our government is not in line with what the Founding Fathers envisioned. We were supposed to be governed by elected officials that we could hold accountable in elections–not by courts and unelected bureaucrats.
On Sunday, Watts Up With That posted an article about a recent 8-0 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The article reports:
In a rare but resounding act of judicial sanity, the Supreme Court of the United States has delivered an 8-0 ruling that reins in one of the most abused weapons in the bureaucratic arsenal: environmental obstructionism. The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, stemmed from a challenge to a planned railway in Utah, a project that environmentalists attempted to kneecap through endless litigation under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In a time when green tape has been weaponized to stall or cancel everything from pipelines to housing, this decision marks a turning point—and it’s worth celebrating.
Let’s start with the heart of the ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh emphasized that,
“NEPA does not allow courts, ‘under the guise of judicial review’ of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand”.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-975_m648.pdf
Translation: judges can’t play fortune teller and block infrastructure because of speculative “ripple effects” on theoretical future projects. In other words, environmental lawfare just hit a serious snag.
This case was triggered by the Surface Transportation Board’s approval of an 88-mile railway to carry crude oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin to the national rail network. Eagle County, Colorado, and its usual cast of green litigators tried to stop the project, arguing that the environmental review should have considered other hypothetical projects or downstream effects that may—or may not—result from this railway’s existence.
But the Court decisively said no. Agencies aren’t expected to possess clairvoyant powers. As Kavanaugh clarified,
“The fact that the project might foreseeably lead to the construction or increased use of a separate project does not mean the agency must consider that separate project’s environmental effects”.
The article concludes:
For too long, infrastructure has been hostage to hypotheticals, paralyzed by process. This ruling loosens those chains. And that’s a victory not just for Utah’s railway, but for every American who still believes in building things.
Here’s to the rare sound of a gavel striking in favor of progress.
Here’s to getting back to legislation passed by Congress and not regulations passed by bureaucrats.