Kavanaugh and Roberts Side with Liberals to Hand Environmentalists Huge Win; Alito Is Not Amused

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by Colin Kalmbacher | 1:43 pm, April 23rd, 2020

Environmentalists scored a significant victory in the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday with help from some unusual suspects.

In a 6-3 opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, two of the court’s conservatives–Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh–joined with the four-member liberal minority in order to strengthen a key provision of the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972.

Stylized as County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, the case stems from a lawsuit filed by “several environmental groups” in 2012 which alleged that Maui’s use of a wastewater reclamation facility ran afoul of the CWA by pumping roughly four million gallons of treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean every day without a permit.

The permitting requirement is considered the heart and soul of the CWA’s overall regulatory effectiveness.

Under the CWA, a permit is required for the “discharge of any pollutant” into U.S. waters–which is defined as “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source [or] any addition of any pollutant to the waters of the contiguous zone or the ocean from any point source other than a vessel or other floating craft.”

More: https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/kavanaugh-and-roberts-side-with-liberals-to-hand-environmentalists-huge-win-alito-is-not-amused/?fbclid=IwAR2OfcYZQTebDgQJ8e-cTap_QBmD7SDeCIl8ZGEUcZea5jH37-0fdaLQcZw