Sackett's Limit.

United States. Environmental Protection Agency ; United States. Supreme Court ; United States. Army. Corps of Engineers

For nearly forty years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps' of Engineers have relied heavily on administrative compliance orders to enforce the Clean Water Act (CWA). The Supreme Court's decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency will likely affect drastic changes in this traditional enforcement strategy. Contrary to the unanimous consensus of federal courts, Sackett decided that compliance orders issued by the EPA under the CWA are subject to judicial review on the underlying question of jurisdiction even before EPA brings an enforcement action. Even this narrow holding is a dramatic departure from decades of CWA enforcement. Moreover, it is unclear from Sackett whether the opinion's effect will remain so narrow or whether every compliance order issued by the Agency under the CWA faces the specter of pre-enforcement judicial review. This Note argues that federal courts should take a narrow reading of Sackett and limit pre-enforcement judicial review of compliance orders to the special issue of establishing CWA jurisdiction. Only a narrow interpretation of Sackett will allow federal courts to avoid the unfortunate ecological consequences of the Court's hostility to water quality regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ecology Law Quarterly is the property of University of California School of Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)