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A decade ago the supreme court unanimously ruled that people are actually allowed to appeal federal agency rulings to the court system, which the Obama administration did not want. The EPA had attempted to fine a couple $75,000 a day for starting to build a home in compliance with local permitting, on the theory that their land being next to a ditch gave the federal government control over the land. The houses right next to the local lake didn't bother the government: they just randomly picked this couple to ruin. Moreover, the EPA claimed that nobody could challenge its rulings in court, as they were "civil actions" rather than final penalties.
The court remanded the case and allowed the couple to appeal the EPA ruling, and it has been working its way back up the appeals courts ever since.
The couple just won a second unanimous supreme court case against Biden's EPA, which had attempted to define the navigable waters of the united states to mean any land on which there is any standing water at any time of the year (turning about 80% of US land into "water" for legal purposes). The EPA tried to moot the case by withdrawing their compliance order, but
It's interesting and a little encouraging that even the liberal members of the court (except Ginsburg) are not eager to give the executive infinite unappealable power. You might get a letter out of the blue threatening you with ruinous fines or prosecution because some federal agency decided to go after you as a test case, but if you have a hundred million dollars and backing from the US Chamber of Commerce, you might actually win after several decades of legal action.
That is not the worst summary of a legal issue I have ever heard, but it isn't great. The Administrative Procedures Act provides for judicial review of “final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in a court.” 5 U. S. C. §704. The issue in the case was whether "final agency action" had yet occurred. Not whether "people are actually allowed to appeal federal agency rulings to the court system," since people have been doing that successfully for decades.
No, 40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions." And according to the Court's decision, that definition dates to the early 1980s. And see, eg, People of State of Ill. v. Outboard Marine Corp, 619 F.2d 623, 627 fn 14 (2nd Cir. 1980) (quoting the rule). It was not a creation of "Biden's EPA," as you imply.
Isn’t this backwards? Are you allowed to use CFR to interpret United States Code? Regulators can’t claim jurisdiction unless a statute grants them jurisdiction right?
No, administrative agencies always promulgate regulations which interpret statutes; they have to, because statutes are always going to use broad terms. " "Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives. . . . Accordingly, this Court has deemed it "constitutionally sufficient if Congress clearly delineates the general policy, the public agency which is to apply it, and the boundaries of this delegated authority.'" The key issue is how much deference courts should give to those interpretations.
More specifically, the statute give the EPA power regarding "the waters of the United States," but does not define that term further. Someone has to specify what that means, and initially that is going to be the administrative agency. Ultimately, it will be the courts, of course, or Congress itself, since if it does not like a regulation it can amend the statute accordingly.
That's the whole issue though right? Congress told EPA to regulate "the waters of the United States", there was some amendment passed that implied that this includes "wetlands adjacent thereto" (because you know, what else are you gonna do about this?), then the EPA decided that this means they can regulate any relatively flat area with reasonably high annual precipitation (i.e. the most densely populated parts of the country).
Plessy died because it was no longer possible to maintain the legal fiction that segregated facilities were "separate but equal". When Chevron dies (and it will) it will be because it is no longer possible to maintain the legal fiction that agencies are operating within reasonable interpretations of statutes.
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