Politico puts spotlight on PLF’s new Environment and Natural Resources practice
Annie Snider, writing for Politico Pro’s Morning Energy newsletter, profiled the launch of our new Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) practice group yesterday:
The small but mighty property rights group Pacific Legal Foundation that has scored a half dozen environmental wins at the Supreme Court over the past two decades is gearing up to go big: It’s launching a new environment and natural resources practice.
Politico goes on to note that we are building on decades of success, most recently in Sackett, at ensuring environmental regulations aren’t abused to serve as all-purpose land use cudgels:
Miller said he sees it as PLF’s job now to “reinforce” the ruling, adding that “part of our responsibility is to come in behind Sackett and make sure the federal government—the Corps of Engineers, the EPA—are actually living by what the court said,” he said.
And the first case we launched under this new banner reflects exactly that. In Zolfaghari v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, we’re challenging an Army Corps decision that holds a Florida property owner to a jurisdictional determination made before the Court’s ruling in Sackett and that is not within the limits Sackett enforced. From the complaint in that case:
The Corps essentially extracted material concessions from Dr. Zolfaghari on false pretenses and under threat of onerous fines and prison. Now, the Corps hides behind that decades-old agreement even though the Supreme Court of the United States held in Sackett that properties like Dr. Zolfaghari do not contain jurisdictional wetlands. The Corps’ continuing enforcement of its requirements contravenes Sackett. If the earlier permits were ever enforceable, they certainly are no longer enforceable after Sackett.
But our ambitions stretch far beyond the Clean Water Act and Sackett. As our announcement post put it: “We are launching this practice because we believe people are the ultimate resource. Our goal is to secure a future in which nature and people both flourish—where environmental policy works with human ingenuity, not against it.” We defend the freedom to use public and private land productively by protecting constitutional limits on government power and promoting abundance through innovation.
Learn more about the new practice here and read the full Politico Pro profile here.
