The Supreme Court on Thursday made it harder for the federal government to police water pollution in a decision that strips protections from wetlands that are isolated from larger bodies of water.
Gift this article Share this article paywall-free. Email Copy Link Copied to clipboard MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO Associated Press WASHINGTON —
By a 5-4 vote, the court said in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that wetlands can only be regulated if they have a"continuous surface connection" to larger, regulated bodies of water. Environmental advocates had predicted that narrowing the reach of that law would strip protections from more than half the wetlands in the country.
The outcome almost certainly will affect ongoing court battles over new wetlands regulations that the Biden administration put in place in December. Two federal judges have temporarily blocked those rules from being enforced in 26 states. Conservative Brett Kavanaugh and the court's three liberal justices charged that their colleagues had rewritten that law.
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