October, 03 2022, 02:18pm EDT
The Supreme Court Will Decide the Future of Clean Water for Generations
Polluters' legal challenge aims to maximize profits at the expense of the health of communities and our environment
WASHINGTON
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), deliberating what waterways and wetlands are protected under the Clean Water Act. The Supreme Court's decision to hear Sackett v. EPA is another troubling sign that the new supermajority in the nation's highest court is pursuing a deregulatory path. Based on an extraordinarily narrow reading of the law, the Sacketts and their industry allies asked the Court to strip protections from about half of the country's wetlands, as well as ephemeral streams, which play a critical role in ecosystems and account for 59% of all streams in the United States.
Earthjustice filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of our clients -- 18 Tribes who rely on waterways for food, economy, and culture -- and are supportive of water protections.
"Congress passed the Clean Water Act to protect all our nation's waters, and protecting wetlands is necessary to achieve that," said Sambhav Sankar, SVP of Programs at Earthjustice. "Today we saw even the Court's conservative Justices wrestle with the reality that all waters are connected, and the fact is that this industry-sponsored effort isn't about protecting private property, it's about radical deregulation. There will always be difficult line-drawing problems in environmental regulation, but time has shown that those lines should be drawn by scientists and politically accountable lawmakers--not unelected judges."
The Sacketts brought their case to the Court hoping to persuade the new conservative supermajority to revisit Rapanos v. United States and rewrite the Clean Water Act. After the Court's 2006 decision in Rapanos, the EPA and Army Corps developed a workable regulatory system to define which wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act--namely, the ones that substantially impact downstream water quality. EPA and the Corps are now responding to concerns about the regulatory system by writing new regulations to further clarify the issue.
The Court's decision to grant that request during an active rulemaking process -- the result of a legal challenge brought by Earthjustice -- demonstrates its willingness to disregard traditional principles of judicial restraint in service of a deregulatory agenda. But at today's argument, we saw that agenda collides with the reality of environmental protection. As several Justices recognized, Congress expressly designed the Act to protect the "integrity" of our nation's waters, and removing protections for wetlands--which filter pollutants, prevent harmful flooding, and more--would defy Congress' purpose.
Congress enacted the Clean Water Act to protect all the "waters of the United States" to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. Today the Court struggled to reconcile the Sacketts' and industry-sponsored arguments with the Act's broad language, Congress' purpose, and with the reality that all waters are connected.
The government's position--and that of the environmental community--is that we should decide which wetlands the Act protects by considering the goals of the act (to protect water quality) and the science (the degree to which wetlands are connected to other waters).
The Sacketts want the Court to rule that the Act only protects wetlands that are physically indistinguishable from navigable water bodies. As even some conservative Justices acknowledged, this arbitrary line would defy the text and purposes of the act, decades of consistent legal interpretation, and the science of environmental protection. The Sacketts' approach would seriously threaten our nation's waters.
A Supreme Court decision is likely in early 2023.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
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"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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