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sackett v epa
'Literally Eat Sh*t': Supreme Court Strikes Down EPA Clean Water Rule
"This ruling undermines decades of progress in environmental protection and leaves communities vulnerable to unchecked pollution," said one critic.
Mar 04, 2025
The right-wing U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned federal rules regulating the discharge of water pollution, weakening the Clean Water Act in an unusual case in which one of the country's greenest cities found itself at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The high court ruled 5-4 in San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency that EPA limitations banning discharges that cause or contribute to violations of water quality standards are an overreach of the agency's statutory authority. The California city joined polluter lobbyists including the National Mining Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers in challenging the EPA's so-called "end-result" requirements.
The ruling severely limits the power of the EPA and states to safeguard water quality under the Clean Water Act (CWA) and undermines the landmark law's stated mission to "restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters."
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court weakened the Clean Water Act's limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water. This will hurt the health of Americans, especially working class people from all backgrounds. Americans deserve clean water.
— Nina Turner ( @ninaturner.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Writing for the majority—which also included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch—far-right Justice Samuel Alito asserted that the EPA "resorting to such requirements is not necessary to protect water quality," and that "if the EPA does its work, our holding should have no adverse effect on water quality."
Alito apparently did not take into account what the Sierra Club has called the Trump administration's " unprecedented" attacks on the EPA, one of numerous federal agencies targeted by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency for terminations and cutbacks.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—in dissent.
Tuesday's ruling follows Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 2023 decision in which the high court severely curtailed protections for "waters of the United States" by holding that the CWA only covers wetlands and permanent bodies of water with a "continuous surface connection" to "traditional interstate navigable waters."
Responding to Tuesday's ruling, Sanjay Narayan, chief appellate counsel of Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, said in a statement that "SCOTUS' decision ignores the basic reality of how water bodies and water pollution work, and could stymie the ability of the EPA to implement the Clean Water Act, a bedrock environmental law that has kept water safe for the last 50 years."
"Because the EPA is not allowed to include health-based standards when regulating water pollution, it'll need to know everything about what might be discharged before a clean water permit can be issued—making the permitting process delayed and incredibly expensive," Narayan added. "The result is likely to be a new system where the public is regularly subjected to unsafe water quality."
Waterkeeper Alliance CEO Marc Yaggi said that "bit by bit, the power of the Clean Water Act is being undermined, weakening protections for our waters, and limiting EPA's ability to safeguard public health and the environment."
"The Supreme Court has set a dangerous precedent that could compromise the safety of our rivers, lakes, and drinking water sources," Yaggi added. "This ruling undermines decades of progress in environmental protection and leaves communities vulnerable to unchecked pollution."
Campaign for New York Health executive director Melanie D'Arrigo said on social media, "The five Supreme Court justices who voted to weaken the Clean Water Act should be forced to drink a nice tall glass of raw sewage discharge."
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Wife's Oil and Gas Leasing Deal Raises New Ethics Concerns About Justice Alito
"Alito doesn't have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real-life, run-of-the-mill political villain," quipped the founder of one ethics watchdog.
Jun 26, 2023
Advocates for ethical government on Monday sounded the alarm on a report revealing that the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leased property in Oklahoma to a fossil fuel company around the same time that the firm was involved in a case before the high court from which the judge did not recuse himself.
According to The Intercept, Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito last June leased a 160-acre plot of land in Grady County, Oklahoma, just southwest of Oklahoma City, to Citizen Energy III under an agreement that she would be paid 3/16ths of all the money the company made from oil and gas sales.
Last month, Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, which severely curtailed protections under the Waters of the United States rule, as Common Dreams reported at the time. The environmental legal advocacy group Earthjustice called the ruling "a catastrophic loss for water protections across the country and a win for big polluters, putting our communities, public health, and local ecosystems" in peril.
The high court's review was well underway at the time of the lease deal, with the justices agreeing to take the case in January 2022 and hearing arguments that October.
"There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family's net wealth," Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the watchdog Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept.
"Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real-life, run-of-the-mill political villain," Hauser added.
As Daniel Boguslaw wrote for The Intercept:
In the past, Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his vast investment portfolio. Many of these recusals were born from an inheritance of stocks after the death of Alito's father-in-law, Bobby Gene Bomgardner. Because Citizen Energy III isn't implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito's holding in Oklahoma doesn't appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito's confirmation hearing in 2006—and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.
During his 2006 Senate confirmation hearing, Alito appeared to set a high ethical bar for himself by stating justices should recuse themselves from cases in which "any possible question" might arise regarding "the appearance of impropriety."
The new revelation comes hot on the heels of a ProPublica report that exposed a previously undisclosed luxury fishing trip in Alaska that Alito was gifted by billionaire and GOP megadonor Paul Singer, whose hedge fund repeatedly had cases before the Supreme Court from which Alito declined to recuse himself.
A petition currently in circulation demands that Alito recuse himself from a pair of cases that will decide the fate of President Joe Biden's plan to relieve the college debt burdens of tens of millions of Americans.
Unlike other federal courts, there is no code of ethics governing Supreme Court justices. Although justices must file financial disclosures under the Ethics in Government Act, the choice of whether or not to recuse themselves from cases involving a conflict of interest is up to them.
"What makes political figures who violate ethics laws so exceptional is how much obviously unethical behavior is legal under our current overly permissive rules."
Another ProPublica report, this one published in April, showed how Justice Clarence Thomas and relatives apparently exploited this loophole by accepting lavish gifts including luxury vacations, domestic and international private jet travel, and even private school tuition for one of the judge's relatives.
"What makes political figures who violate ethics laws so exceptional is how much obviously unethical behavior is legal under our current overly permissive rules," Hauser told The Intercept. "Our current ethics regime assumes that a person's financial interests need to be extremely specific in order to influence their behavior, a worldview that ignores the foresight rich people and corporations regularly demonstrate."
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Amid Scandal, Clarence Thomas Gets Extension on Financial Disclosures
"This is bullsh*t," said one critic. "This means that he’ll be sitting there forever, putting off filing his supposed disclosures, which will probably be more BS anyway."
Jun 07, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—who is under fire for lavish gifts he and his relatives received from billionaire Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow—has been granted a 90-day extension to file his 2022 financial disclosure report, multiple media outlets reported Wednesday.
Thomas, who according to Bloomberg "typically files his financial disclosures by the May 15 deadline," requested an extension—as did Justice Samuel Alito—giving them more time to report their income, investments, gifts, and spousal salaries.
\u201cThis is bullshit, this means that he\u2019ll be sitting there forever, putting off filing his supposed disclosures, which will probably be more BS anyway. You can\u2019t expect much out of a country with a corrupt high court. https://t.co/9CCLvBLiPg\u201d— RC deWinter (@RC deWinter) 1686158901
As CNN reports:
The move means that any official information about Thomas' relationship with... Crow may not be released until after the end of the current Supreme Court term, and major rulings come down on election law, religious liberty, affirmative action, and student loans, among other issues.
The Supreme Court has been under a microscope this year as critics argue the justices are not doing enough to ensure transparency when it comes to ethics guidelines, and the late filings by Thomas and Alito could further fuel claims by watchdog groups and others that the justices are not taking seriously their concerns.
Public scrutiny and criticism of Thomas mounted in April after a bombshell ProPublica report revealed that the right-wing justice "has repeatedly accepted and failed to disclose gifts and travel" from Crow, including private jet travel, luxury vacations, and private school tuition for a relative.
\u201cTo be fair, Clarence Thomas may not actually know how to fill one of these out properly.\n\nIs he a dependent of Harlan Crow? Is the dark money his wife gets considered a contribution or income? Are vacations with plaintiffs business trips? \n\nSo confusing.\nhttps://t.co/thxrgh0tUQ\u201d— Melanie D'Arrigo (@Melanie D'Arrigo) 1686161457
While Thomas has dismissed criticism by saying he benefited only from "personal hospitality from close personal friends" and that Crow "did not have business before the court," multiple investigations have disproven that assertion.
On Tuesday, The Lever provided one example:
Late last month, in a 5-4 ruling on the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency case, the Supreme Court dramatically narrowed the scope of the 1972 Clean Water Act in an act of judicial activism so brazen, even the Donald Trump-appointed [Supreme Court Justice] Brett Kavanaugh accused the court of "rewriting" the law and failing to "stick to the text."
Thomas joined right-wing Justices Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts in the court's majority opinion.
On Tuesday, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said that "nothing is off the table"—including a subpoena—after Michael Bopp, a lawyer representing Crow, continued to duck questions about his largesse toward Thomas and his family.
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