The regulators lost to the regulated today in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. As Ilya notes below, the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion held that property owners and other regulated parties may challenge administrative compliance orders issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act. This is a small, yet significant, victory guaranteeing a modicum of procedural protection for those subject to regulation under the CWA.
In this case, the EPA issued an ACO to the Sacketts alleging they had filled wetlands without a federal permit and directing them to take remedial action or face civil penalties. The Sacketts had sought an agency hearing on the matter, but the EPA declined. So the Sacketts went to court. The federal government maintained that judicial review of the ACO was unavailable unless and until the EPA filed a civil enforcement action against them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concurred, only to be reversed by the Supreme Court.
Writing for the Court, Justice Antonin Scalia explained that an ACO can be challenged as a final agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, as the order represents the conclusion of the agency’s consideration of the question and is, itself, the source of a binding obligation on the regulated party. The order “has all of the hallmarks of APA finality” and is thus presumptively subject to judicial review. As the CWA does not expressly or impliedly preclude judicial review, and there is no other adequate remedy in court, the Sacketts can have their day in court.
Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court is quite narrow, and lacks the rhetorical flourishes we’ve come to expect in his environmental opinions. The Court had no occasion to reach the due process issues lurking below the surface of the case – specifically whether the Sacketts would be entitled to some opportunity to be heard, if not in court then before the agency, before they could be subject to fines for violating the administrative compliance order. Although Justice Scalia noted the continuing uncertainty over the scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction under the CWA, particularly with regard to wetlands, his opinion made clear the Court was expressing no opinion as to whether the EPA properly asserted jurisdiction over the Sacketts’ land. Solely at issue was whether the Sackett’s could challenge the EPA’s assertion of jurisdiction and claim that the Sacketts had violated federal law by filling jurisdictional wetlands on their property without first obtaining a federal permit. Justice Ginsburg wrote a brief concurring opinion stressing this point.
Justice Alito’s concurring opinion stressed the continuing regulatory uncertainty to which private landownres are subject under the Clean Water Act. The statute’s reach is “notoriously unclear,” and yet landowners can face substantial fines if they fail to obtain the requisite federal permits before modifying wetlands on their land. According to Alito, the Court’s decision in Sackett offers landowners “ a modest measure of relief” in that it now ensures that landowners may seek judicial review of an agency order directing them to cure CWA violations or face additional fines. Yet according to Alito, the burden on landowners remains substantial.
the combination of the uncertain reach of the Clean Water Act and the draconian penalties imposed for the sort of violations alleged in this case still leaves most property owners with little practical alternative but to dance to the EPA’s tune.
According to Alito, real relief will only come when Congress or the agencies provide a “reasonably clear” jurisdictional rule defining what constitute “waters” subject to federal regulatory control.
For 40 years, Congress has done nothing to resolve this critical ambiguity, and the EPA has not seen fit to promulgate a rule providing a clear and sufficiently limited definition of the phrase. Instead, the agency has relied on informal guidance. But far from providing clarity and predictability, the agency’s latest informal guidance advises property owners that many jurisdictional determinations concerning wetlands can only be made on a case-by-case basis by EPA field staff.
Despite repeated losses in the Supreme Court, the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have yet to make any serious effort to delineate the scope of their regulatory jurisdiction. The latest guidance, issued in response to Rapanos, is no exception. This virtually assures the question of CWA regulatory jurisdiction will come before the Supreme Court yet again, and the ability of the Sacketts and other regulated landowners to challenge ACOs should only accelerate the process.
Here are my prior posts on the Sackett case:
- Court to Consider Administrative Compliance Orders
- Sackett v. EPA
- Sackett Oral Argument
- Funk on Sackett
UPDATE: At Legal Planet, Richard Frank assesses the case. His conclusion:
Some will argue that the availability of judicial review to contest administrative orders issued by EPA under the Clean Water Act will hamper federal enforcement efforts in the future. That’s due in significant part to the fact that the vast majority of federal actions to enforce the CWA take the form of such orders, rather than formal administrative hearings or federal litigation that are more costly, resource-intensive and time-consuming for EPA.
Be that as it may, my own opinion is that Scalia and the Court got this one right. The Sackettdecision’s statutory analysis seems compelling, and the equities of this particular David-and-Goliath saga fall rather strikingly in favor of the Sacketts. I don’t often find myself in agreement with Justice Scalia, but I confess that I do here. One of Scalia’s closing observations in Sackett particularly resonated with me: “there is no reason to think that the Clean Water Act was uniquely designed to enable the strong-arming of regulated parties into `voluntary compliance’ without the opportunity for judicial review–even judicial review of the question whether the regulated party is within the EPA’s jurisdiction.”