As construction industry groups await a Supreme Court ruling in a narrowly focused Clean Water Act case, they also are seeking clues as to how the justices may view a much more important matter that has not yet come before them—an expected frontal challenge to a wide-ranging U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-Army Corps of Engineers regulation governing federal jurisdiction over the “waters of the United States.”
Merrick B. Garland, President’s Obama’s nominee to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat left open by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February, has a history of giving deference to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in clean air and other environmental cases and has sided more often with EPA than industry, according to SCOTUSblog, which analyzes high court cases.
With Republicans vowing to block any Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly on Feb. 13, the fate of cases pending before the court, or that could end up on its future docket, has been clouded with uncertainty.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will abide by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to place a hold on implementing a rule to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, the agency’s administrator says.
