The Supreme Court ruling may allow some rail and other infrastructure projects to shorten the time needed for permitting.
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That should be good.
The immediate question before the court was, should transportation projects be evaluated based on the impacts of the transportation itself, or on the impacts of the activities that are made possible (“reasonably foreseeable”) by the fact that the transportation now exists? Different federal circuits had answered the question differently. The court ruled that only the direct impacts of the project itself need to be addressed, not the “upstream and downstream” effects that will likely result from the presence of a new transportation service.
That is definitely advantageous for rail and pipeline projects, which often are designed with an obvious commodity move in mind. It also brings them more in line with highway projects, whose upstream and downstream effects are more nebulous and therefore are not usually taken into account.
All eight participating members of the court agreed on this much, and so do I.
But the five “conservatives” (the usual six minus Gorsuch, who recused himself) went beyond that (despite not having to do so in order to decide the case). They basically tried to choke off these lawsuits about whether an EIS is deficient by emphasizing that the courts must be very deferential to the agency that conducted the EIS, and can only require the agency to take the proper procedural steps, not require them to actually weigh things in a reasonable manner. That’s a little ironic given that they eliminated the idea of courts deferring to agencies in other contexts just last year in the Loper case. Given the current tendency for the White House to intervene and interfere in agency actions to demand the outcome it wants regardless of the law, this emphasis on deference seems to be an invitation for agencies to pay only lip service to environmental concerns.
Dan
“Current”? Every White House for the past 50 years has done the same thing. These agencies are under the control of the White House. They do what the White House wants. If it’s regardless of the law, there are plenty of judges waiting to rule against the directives
As far as paying lip service to environmental concerns, part of the issue was brought on by the environmental lawyers, environmental judges, and in some cases, by the EPA, all over-reaching in their rules.
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One specific issue here, as I recall, was totting up the cumulative megatonnage of carbon emissions from the material transported, over the lifetime of the project, and rolling that into the ‘environmental impact’. I seem to recall a recent NPR story about a similar attempt to charge a ‘carbon emitter’ for their “fair share” of climate-change-induced lake-height rise and flooding damage. The amount in question was small, about $18,500 – but the potential consequences of finding that sort of consequential liability admissible, enormous.
Related could be funding for the EPA Superfund which is used to mitigate damage where the responsible parties can’t be identified or are unable to cover the costs.
It was a case in Germany at the Higher Regional Court in Hamm, German energy giant RWE vs a Peruvian farmer.
The case was dismissed because the court followed an expert opinion that the risk of the plaintiff’s house being flooded was low if the lake overflowed.
The court did not generally rule out such liability; the risk situation appears to be decisive. No appeal is permitted. Another court could decide differently.
Regards, Volker
Thank you!
This is not exactly true and still is not true today. An Executive Branch agency is a balance between the Executive and Congress. While it is true that an Executive Branch agency can show deference to POTUS and most do. They are also bound by statutory law which was written by the Congress that created the agency. One of the items that blocked DOGE from cutting too deeply is the current POTUS was blocked from cutting statutory support of each agency. One of the circuit breakers put in place a long time ago. It is kind of a balance between Executive and Legislative. Even with the current POTUS expanding the role of appointed by POTUS officials in each agency…they are bound by statutory law and their hands are tied in how far they can go.
The big reason SCOTUS ruled that POTUS could not fire the Fed Chairman is majority of the Federal Reserve is privately owned and run. In fact most of the Treasury IT systems are hosted by either the privately run Federal Reserve District Banks or by the large Commercial Banks like JP Morgan, Fifth-Third, Bank of America, etc. Congress created the Bureau of the Fiscal Service of the Treasury so that the United States would not duplicate the private banking sector operations with a large and bureaucratic Central Bank. So the Federal Reserve is not your average Federal Area or Agency.
That’s why I wrote,
Well if you get it then fine but I want to be clear for the rest of the readers here.
Statutory law is written by the Congress and approved by the Executive, in this case the Executive in the past. So it is different from common or constitutional law. So the Executive today can’t really misinterpret what was a written agreement before (in rough terms). I think in most cases the judges are ruling on Constitutional or common law issues more than statutory law. So that would be past legal precedent set by the Judicial Branch, which is not always clearly written or understood. The conflict with the directives issued in almost all cases have to do with interpretations of the constitution and in some cases common law (past Judicial Decisions). Statutory law is not open to much interpretation or misinterpretation in most cases…it is black or white…no gray area. Basic example: You will perform this activity by this performance metric each year or even more basic local example: Speed Limit is 55 mph. Yes you go before the Judicial Branch if you break statutory law but you need to have a decent reason why. My suspicion avoidance of openly challenging most statutory law is at the behest of the Justice Department because Prosecutors do not want to go there. Additionally, Agency related fights with Congress over statutory law would erode political support fast.
Though my argument is not that some statutory legal lines were not crossed at times and challenged in court. I don’t see that as deliberate and it is more accidental.
Which touches on whether Eagle County, CO had sufficient standing with respect to the suit. The 8-0 vote comes across as quite the slap in the face of the lower court that upheld the suit - though not to the extant where SCOTUS told the 9th Circuit to stop issuing stays of execution for R. A Harris in the 1990’s.
لا أعتقد أنك ستجد الكثير من المتحدثين بالعربية هنا. هذه مجرد وجهة نظري.
American English Please
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The lower court ruling was absurd. Oil wells and production facilities have to have environmental assessments and permits before they can drill. Refineries must also have a number of environmental permits. For the lower court to say that the transporter carrying the crude between the two, now has to second guess already environmentally permitted activity is beyond creative. It is no surprise that the Supreme Court decide 8-0 that the lower court was out of line. It probably would have been 9-0 if the last justice didn’t have to recuse himself. The only thing that Eagle County might have hung their hat on was environmental damage a rail car oil spill might have done to their locale, however, it is an area of rampant ski resort development, and hardly a pristine wilderness. (And I have skied at both Beaver Creek and Vail.)
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Who posted this in Arabic?
“I don’t think you’ll find a lot of Arabic speakers here. That’s just my point of view.”
I know I forwarded it to Rene with a note to get it checked… and I had at least 100 spam messages in the same script to my e-mail and text the rest of the morning. Perhaps not so wise to quote it; definitely unwise to permit or retain any ‘member of the forum community’ who posts in a foreign language other than quote for effect…
As I recall, the old Kalmbach QoS had a requirement that posts be made primarily in English, and unless Firecrown wants to enable inline translation or auto translation, they should establish a similar condition.
I’m assuming you meant “old Kalmbach ToS” as the Firecrown QoS is far better than the Kalmbach QoS was in the later years.
You’d be correct – it’s crApple autocorrect doing its usual dubious jobbing.