Articles

Today, the president is signing an executive order designed to bring more accountability to federal agencies. This executive order comes partly as a result of PLF research and cases battling bureaucratic overreach. PLF client Andy Johnson will be at the signing ceremony. Below is an article from 2016 that Andy wrote describing, in his own words, hi ...

The Johnson family's long ordeal with EPA, concerning their construction of an environmentally-friendly stock pond on their private property, is finally over. After ordering Andy Johnson to remove the pond, on pain of tens of millions of dollars in potential fines, the federal government has agreed to settle the case. Importantly, under the settlem ...

Andy Johnson owns eight acres of land in Fort Bridger, Wyoming, where he's made his family's home and raises livestock. A small stream crosses his property and provides water for his livestock, as it has for prior owners going back decades. In 2012, he erected a small dam on the stream to create a stock pond to provide more reliable, safer access t ...

Professor Joel Mintz of Nova Southeastern University has published Sackett v. EPA and Judicial Interpretations of Environmental Statutes:  What Role for NEPA?, in a recent issue of Environmental Law.  Professor Mintz's thesis is that the Supreme Court may have erred in Sackett by not taking into account Section 102 of the National Environmental ...

Now available online is Cato's 2011-2012 volume of its Supreme Court Review.  In it, you'll find my article on Sackett v. EPA.  The piece not only discusses the decision and its impact on EPA's enforcement of the Clean Water Act, it also details how PLF litigated the case from the district court up to the Supreme Court, and our strategy choices a ...

You'll recall the brouhaha begun a few months ago when a senior EPA official was quoted as saying that it would be "same old, same old" at the agency irrespective of the Supreme Court's decision authorizing landowners to sue when they receive an EPA compliance order.  Shortly thereafter, over a dozen Senators signed a letter to EPA Administrator ...

One would have thought that the Supreme Court's unanimous decision holding that landowners have a right to sue EPA when the agency issues Clean Water Act compliance orders would have led to some soul-searching at EPA.  At the very least, one might have expected some initial acknowledgement that maybe the enforcement practice should change. Not so ...

Last Thursday, E&E reporter Lawrence Hurley published this story on PLF's landmark victory in Sackett v. EPA. The story is titled "Justice was blind to some facts in Idaho wetlands case," and the impression one gets from reading it is that Mike and Chantell Sackett should not be viewed as sympathetically as common sense would suggest. In th ...

Recent articles or quotes about Sackett v. EPA by environmentalists have foretold disaster if the Sacketts win their case against the EPA. To them, landowners should not be able to haul EPA into court when they issue Compliance Orders, no matter how onerous those Orders are, because it would hinder the EPA's ability, as they see it, to do its job- ...