Jurisdictional determinations under the Clean Water Act, revisited

July 23, 2015 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

Federal administrative agencies should comply with their own regulations.  Right?  It doesn’t always happen that way.

Yesterday, on behalf of our client, Gallagher & Henry, a second-generation, family – owned developer, we filed a lawsuit challenging a determination made by the United States Army Corps of Engineers that Gallagher & Henry’s property in Tinley Park, Illinois, is a jurisdictional wetland under the federal Clean Water Act. The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that the property at issue is prior converted cropland, which is excluded from Clean Water Act jurisdiction by the Corps’ own regulations.  That regulatory exclusion is of keen interest to farmers and developers nationwide.

The federal government has consistently taken the position that jurisdictional determinations are not reviewable in court because they do not affect the legal relationship between property owners and the government.  The problem is that, once a jurisdictional determination is made, a property owner is forced to apply for a permit from the Corps, which could take years of effort at substantial cost, or forego developing the property, or simply proceed with the project without a permit, at the risk of substantial civil and criminal penalties.   PLF successfully litigated the reviewability issue in the Hawkes case, where the Eighth Circuit held that jurisdictional determinations are judicially reviewable.  But in another PLF case, the Fifth Circuit held in Kent that jurisdictional determinations are not reviewable.  In an effort to resolve the split between the circuits, PLF filed a petition for certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, seeking review of the Kent decision.  That petition is pending.

Undoubtedly, the government will argue here that the Corps’ jurisdictional determination is unreviewable.  But this case was filed in a federal district court in the Seventh Circuit, which is not bound by either Hawkes or Kent.  The reviewability of the Corps jurisdictional determination will be among the first battles in the case.