Shareholder Steven Miano recently spoke with Bloomberg Law about the ongoing impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA.
Steve, who chairs the firm’s environmental practice group, said the Biden administration’s claims of broad authority over wetlands on Alaska’s North Slope may be at odds with the high court’s landmark ruling, which drastically curtailed federal protections for wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
The administration “is walking a thin line here,” Steve said in the article. “They are throwing a very large jurisdictional blanket over the entire Arctic area.”
In Sackett, the high court held that wetlands must be “relatively permanent” and have a continuous connection with larger waterways in order to receive federal protections as waters of the United States. The Biden administration, however, has argued that any “physical” connection between a wetland and a navigable waterway is sufficient to establish federal protections, sparking a series of lawsuits from trade groups and private landowners.
