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Texas Governor Rick Perry may not have been able to recall if he wanted to shut down the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but all Americans should remember the public service that he and his fellow Texans have done by challenging EPA's overreaching regulation. This week the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals obliterated a 2010 EPA ruling that disapproved Texas's program to meet national air-quality standards.

These standards are set by the EPA, but it's up to individual states to figure out how to meet them under the Clean Air Act. EPA has the authority to reject such plans, but only with cause. Such cooperative federalism is rooted in the constitutional balance of state and federal power that was so much on display this week in the Supreme Court's consideration of ObamaCare.

This week the appellate court found that the EPA "failed to identify a single provision of the Act that Texas's program violated, let alone explain its reasons for reaching its conclusion." The court noted that the EPA had missed the statutory deadline for issuing a rejection by more than three years. It's hard to find a clearer example of Washington-created uncertainty than fact-free rulings that an agency lacks the authority even to issue.

Mike and Chantell Sackett took their land dispute against the EPA all the way to the United States Supreme Court and found out Wednesday morning they won.
The couple learned Wednesday that the land's highest court sided unanimously in their dispute with the Environmental Protection Agency...

The Sacketts bought six-tenths of an acre on the west side of Priest Lake in 2005 with plans to build a home. They obtained a building permit and started laying gravel, but then the EPA came in, claimed the property was a wetland and threatened them with fines of up to $75,000 a day.

The EPA claimed they were violating the Clean Water Act and could build on the property only after purchasing a wetland building permit that would cost around $200,000. The couple contested the claim but the EPA denied their request; the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals told the Sacketts they needed to go through the wetlands permit process.

The couple said they hired soil scientists and hydrologists who proved the land is not in fact a wetland.

"They just issued the compliance order and said you have to do what they say. That is what we have a problem with is the principle," Sackett said.

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision now allows the Sacketts to challenge the EPA's ruling. In the court's decision, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said, "In a nation that values due process … such treatment is unthinkable. This would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of the EPA employees."

baffled wrote:It's odd and sad to me that the victory here is that the Sackett's got their chance to just to argue their case in court.

protobuilder wrote:

baffled wrote:It's odd and sad to me that the victory here is that the Sackett's got their chance to just to argue their case in court.

Yeah and it only took years and probably a lot of money as well.