Appeals Court Stops WOTUS In All 50 States

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6 Circuit, ruled to suspend implementation of the final “Waters of the U.S”.

The stay was the latest in a series of legal setbacks for Obama administration environmental regulations.

Following that stay, 17 other states that were not covered under the order filed a motion seeking to halt WOTUS.

Critics had said the rule would give the Environmental Protection Agency control over irrigation ditches, canals and small streams, giving the federal government a say in permitting and land-use decisions over millions of acres of land surrounding those waters. “Under President Obama, the EPA has a history of rushing out rules despite significant opposition, even from other executive branch agencies”.

The National Federation of Independent Business, one of the groups that sued to stop the rule, cheered Friday’s decision.

While the panel did not find that the states were likely to suffer immediate irreparable harm if the rule continued to be enforced, it stated that neither was it likely that the waterways would be injured by a stay.

While AFBF and others wait for the court, a bill now before the Senate, if passed, would require EPA and the Corps to abandon the rule and conduct a new rulemaking.

“The WOTUS rule is a devastating blow to private property rights and is an unlawful power grab by the EPA over virtually all bodies of water in the United States”, Pruitt says is a press release. The court still needs to go through the process of making a full ruling on it. After that, it can be appealed up to the Supreme Court.

“Lawsuit or no lawsuit, we need Congress to act”, Stallman said.

Sasse was a co-sponsor of a resolution objecting to the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, and he joined in supporting the proposed Federal Water Quality Protection Act, authored by a colleague, Sen.

The Sixth Circuit’s ruling was on a consolidation of four cases involving the 18 states: Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, West Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin. The issues raised by the judges in this 2-1 decision are not fully established in an evidentiary process.

As the Sixth Circuit said it its ruling, “A stay temporarily silences the whirlwind of confusion that springs from uncertainty about the requirements of the new Rule and whether they will survive legal testing”.

“We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims”, they added, “…the sheer breadth of the ripple effects caused by the Rule’s definitional changes counsels strongly in favor of maintaining the status quo for the time being”.