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'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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'When Big Oil Says Jump, Republicans Ask How High?' GOP Sends Climate-Killing Bill to Trump's Desk
"It's a sorry testament to the influence of Big Oil on Capitol Hill that one of the top priorities of Congress is a blatant handout to the worst actors in the fossil fuel industry," said one critic.
Feb 28, 2025
Climate advocates are blasting congressional Republicans this week for their latest gift to fossil fuel industry: sending a resolution to kill the federal Methane Emissions Reduction Program to the desk of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Big Oil-backed Trump is expected to sign the Congressional Review Act resolution, which senators passed along party lines on Thursday. That followed a Wednesday vote in the House of Representatives, where Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Vincente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), Kristen Donald Rivet (Mich.), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) supported the measure alongside all Republicans present except Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Methane has more than 80 times as much warming power as carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere. The pollution program was established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last November. The Associated Press reported Thursday that "most major oil and gas companies do not release enough methane to trigger the fee, which is $900 per ton, an amount that would increase to $1,500 by 2026."
The GOP resolution will end the program, but not the mandate from the 2022 law. Mahyar Sorour, Sierra Club's director of beyond fossil fuels policy, declared that "this attack on EPA's implementation of the methane waste emissions charge is short-sighted and harmful. It remains a legal requirement for EPA to hold the biggest methane polluters accountable for their negligence."
"Forcing the agency to implement the charge some other way after conducting a thorough, well-researched process is as wasteful of taxpayer resources as these oil and gas operators are wasteful of harmful methane," Sorour argued. "Technology to monitor and stop leaks is readily available and easy to implement, so only wasteful, careless corporations will face a fee for excessive methane pollution. Despite this setback, Sierra Club will not stop fighting to make polluters pay for their egregious actions."
The resolution hit Trump's desk just over a month after his return to office. Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said that "it's a sorry testament to the influence of Big Oil on Capitol Hill that one of the top priorities of Congress is a blatant handout to the worst actors in the fossil fuel industry. Congress is showing its hypocrisy by claiming to seek to rein in government spending, while voting to repeal a revenue-raising fee that only applies to wasteful oil and gas companies."
"The methane fee was paired with a $1.5 billion government spending program to help oil and gas companies reduce harmful emissions," noted Slocum, who then took aim at Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency. "Voting to repeal the fee while allowing profitable corporations to pocket hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is an affront to the millions of working Americans disrupted by indiscriminate DOGE cost-cutting."
"It should not be too much to ask fossil fuel producers to do the bare minimum to capture leaking methane," he added. "Any child knows that when you make a mess, you should clean it up. The fee was intended to be a key part of enforcing standards on an industry that has repeatedly cut corners in its endless drive to extract more fossil fuels."
Critics highlighted how the rollback is expected to affect not only the warming planet but also public health. Moms Clean Air Force national field director Patrice Tomcik said that "as a mother living with oil and gas operations in my neighborhood, I have concerns about the impact of oil and gas pollution on the health of my children and neighbors."
"Polling shows that support for stronger standards on oil and gas operations is widespread across the country, including in oil and gas states, such as Pennsylvania, where my family lives," Tomcik pointed out. "Protecting the air our children breathe and combating the global heating fueling extreme weather should be nonnegotiable."
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Ignoring 'Science and the Law,' Trump EPA Readies Chainsaw for Key Climate Finding
"Lee Zeldin is willing to go so far as to break established law to pay back the corporate executives and polluters who spent millions to get Donald Trump elected," said one climate leader.
Feb 26, 2025
Climate advocates said Wednesday that the Trump administration will be abdicating its "clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution" if it moves forward with repealing the 16-year-old scientific finding that has underpinned the federal government's actions to protect people and the planet from fossil fuel emissions.
As The Washington Postreported, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is pushing the White House to repeal the endangerment finding, an official determination announced in 2009 that affirmed what the fossil fuel industry had known for decades: that emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause planetary heating and threaten public health.
The finding gave the government the authority to regulate such pollution.
For several days, the White House and EPA refused to release the results of a 30-day review of the endangerment finding, which President Donald Trump called for under an executive order he issued on his first day in office.
Three people with knowledge of the issue, who remained anonymous, told the Post that former EPA Chief of Staff Mandy Gunasekara—who wrote the chapter on the agency in the right-wing policy agenda Project 2025—has been advising the administration on the potential repeal of the endangerment finding.
Another former official from Trump's first term, attorney Jonathan Brightbill, is also providing legal advice on repealing the scientific finding, which has provided the basis for federal regulations on automobile, aircraft, and power plant emissions.
By repealing the endangerment finding in place, the administration would throw out thousands of scientific studies showing how fossil fuel emissions heat the planet and are linked to heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and other life-threatening health problems—and clear the way to overturn climate policies introduced by former President Joe Biden.
Denying the science underpinning the finding, said Green New Deal co-sponsor Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), makes the administration "a danger to our country."
Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said that any attempt by the Trump administration to gut the endangerment finding would be "fully challenged in court."
"Eliminating the endangerment finding would be a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, which has spent decades lying to the public about the harms of their product," said Cleetus. "The science backing the EPA's finding is rigorous and unequivocal—heat-trapping emissions pose serious threats to public health and well-being. EPA has the authority and legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate sources of these pollutants, including vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas operations."
Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, also warned that the organization "will meet [the EPA] in court" if it moves forward with the repeal.
"Lee Zeldin is willing to go so far as to break established law to pay back the corporate executives and polluters who spent millions to get Donald Trump elected," said Jealous. "This breathtakingly illegal power grab defies both the Supreme Court and Congress, and if Trump agrees to this plan, the Sierra Club will meet them in court. We will never allow any administration to sell out the climate, our health, our clean air, and our future."
Zeldin is reportedly recommending that the finding be repealed weeks after wildfires destroyed more than 12,000 homes and other buildings in the Los Angeles area and after meteorologists reported a record 143 days last year of 100°F heat or higher last year. More than 100 people were killed last year by Hurricane Helene, which damaged about 74,000 homes.
"If the Trump EPA proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare, it will mean more polluted air and more catastrophic extreme weather for Americans."
Experts found that the fires that devastated Los Angeles were made 35% more likely by dry, hot weather conditions and that planetary heating made Helene more dangerous and destructive.
"Any recommendation to strike the finding would be a bad-faith attempt to circumvent the law and best available science with the sole aim of boosting fossil fuel use and the profits of polluting companies," said Cleetus. "Meanwhile, people around the nation, especially in communities acutely exposed to climate impacts or pollution, will pay the price."
Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, said the new reporting revealed that Zeldin "is contaminating EPA with a virulent strain of climate denial that has seized hold of many of the Trump administration's Cabinet members."
Browning noted that the EPA issued its determination in 2009 in response to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, which established that the agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
"EPA's action respected the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court," said Browning. "It respected the bedrock science and respected what we all know to be true: Families across the country are experiencing the extreme weather fueled by climate emissions. With every new supercharged wildfire, hurricane, flood, and heatwave, the danger takes on a terrifying intimacy: Think of the summers that have become too hot for children to play outside, of the lifetime trauma of losing a home in a flood or fire."
"Administrator Zeldin's recommendation to strike down the endangerment finding will only bolster the billions of dollars of profit being made by the oil and gas industry—while ransacking our children's safety," Browning said.
David Doniger, senior strategist and attorney for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Zeldin's reported plan "only makes sense if you consider who would benefit: the oil, coal, and gas magnates who handed the president millions of dollars in campaign contributions."
The fossil fuel industry poured nearly $450 million into Trump's campaign, and the president promised to roll back climate regulations if oil and gas companies donated heavily to him in what critics called a quid pro quo.
"This decision ignores science and the law," said Doniger. "Fifteen years ago, the EPA determined that climate pollution endangers our health and well-being. The Denali-sized mountain of scientific evidence behind that decision has only grown to Mount Everest–size since then. The courts have repeatedly upheld the EPA's legal authority and its scientific conclusions."
"This is the clearest example of the Trump administration putting polluters over people, and that's saying a lot," Doniger added. "If the Trump EPA proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare, it will mean more polluted air and more catastrophic extreme weather for Americans. We will see them in court."
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