Just north of Nashville, Tennessee, the City of Springfield provides a calm retreat from the hectic city hustle and bustle. Locals and tourists alike enjoy its scenic parks and serene rivers. But an Alabama-based advocacy group is using an unconstitutional provision of the Clean Water Act to put those same rivers at the center of a nuisance lawsuit.
The Clean Water Act has contained a citizen suit provision since 1972. That provision empowers private groups to sue on the public’s behalf—wrongly delegating the executive branch’s power to unelected groups with no oversight or accountability, in violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.
An Alabama-based group called Tennessee Riverkeeper is relying on that provision to prosecute Springfield for alleged violations of a discharge permit at the City’s wastewater facility. Neither the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency nor the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation have sued Springfield in federal court for discharge violations under the CWA, and both agencies have declined to participate in Tennessee Riverkeeper’s suit.
Riverkeeper has filed thirty similar lawsuits against small towns and businesses across Tennessee and Alabama—many of which have settled rather than devoting years and large sums of taxpayer funds to costly litigation battles.
But Springfield isn’t most towns.
The City is partnering with Pacific Legal Foundation to challenge Tennessee Riverkeeper’s lawsuit, arguing that the provision empowering the group to sue in the first place is an unconstitutional delegation of the executive power.
Non-government entities do not have the authority to govern. Because the Clean Water Act’s “citizen suit” provision unconstitutionally gives the executive branch’s power to enforce federal law to unelected and unaccountable private citizens, it should be struck down by the courts.
In addition to being legally invalid, the “citizen suit” provision actively undermines the conservation goals set forth in legislation like the Clean Water Act. The provision transforms environmental law into a revenue-generating scheme for private actors’ profit, enabling them to target communities and businesses with alleged environmental violations—which neither the federal government nor state agencies chose to pursue—in pursuit of settlement payouts. Their nuisance suits force local communities to waste taxpayer resources on needless litigation rather than investing in infrastructure to protect their natural resources or to responsibly use those resources to promote human flourishing.
Environmental law should prioritize abundance, not take a punitive approach that turns conservation into little more than a bludgeon for bad actors. When a law wrongly puts government power into private hands, everyone loses—until someone is willing to stand up to that abuse in court, as the City of Springfield is doing through its challenge to Tennessee Riverkeeper’s suit.
Pacific Legal Foundation recently also represented the City of Luttrell, Tennessee, in a near-identical suit filed and rapidly abandoned by Tennessee Riverkeeper. Luttrell celebrated a swift legal victory when Tennessee Riverkeeper withdrew its suit just weeks after PLF announced its involvement in the case.
What’s At Stake?
- Non-government entities do not have the authority to govern.
- The “citizen suit” provision of the Clean Water Act unconstitutionally gives the executive branch’s power to enforce federal law to unelected and unaccountable private citizens.
- Environmental law should prioritize abundance and human flourishing—not take a punitive approach that turns conservation into a bludgeon for bad actors.
