Supreme Court hears lively debate on protecting wetlands, led in part by Justice Jackson
By a wide margin, the Supreme Court rejected the government’s argument that the federal government was a trustee for the state and owed its citizens a legal duty of care for the state’s wetlands for the benefit of the public.
The Court’s 6 to 3 ruling on that point took away the government’s right to sue and make a public nuisance out of the wetlands of the state of Louisiana through its failure to protect the wetlands.
The ruling also removed from the state the government’s right to obtain an injunction that would require removal of wetland lands from the wetlands, and its right of eminent domain to take from the state lands what the state claims it owns for public use, and require the state to pay fair market value to the state’s own employees, who would not otherwise do the necessary work to protect that land.
The ruling of the entire Court on the public nuisance issue, which was the main issue in the case, was 5 to 4.
In addition, the Court rejected the government’s argument that a private person had the right to impose a wetland easement to allow development of wetlands. The Court also rejected the government’s argument that a private person could impose a wetland easement to protect its own property from being flooded, and that the state had standing to sue.
The ruling is based in much of the Court’s jurisprudence that states have sovereign powers to regulate activities out on private land, but only when that regulation involves their own lands. The decision is an affirmation of that principle as explained in the opinion of Justice Brennan, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Marshall.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue is based on the principles that the government has a right to be able to regulate its own activities, but that that power is limited and does not extend to regulating all activity on private land. The Court also held, in a decision not involving
