Yet Another Court Rules That Obama’s “Waters Of The U.S.” Rule Is Unlawful

The Waters Of The Unites States is one of the worst rules to come from the Obama administration, and that’s saying quite a bit

Obama sees his legacy dying one issue at a time

(Legal Insurrection) Back in 2015, we covered the Obama administration’s far-reaching Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Rule and the pushback it received at the time.  States’ suits are making their way through the courts, and there is good news to report!

U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood has handed a victory to the state of Georgia and nine other states that sued the federal government (and to the rest of the nation) by declaring that the  WOTUS Rule is unlawful.

Wood stated that the rule, which was intended to provide better protection of the nation’s water, violated the Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, and she remanded it back to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers for further work.

She wrote that while the agencies have authority to interpret the phrase “waters of the United States,” that authority isn’t limitless, and therefore their decisions in doing so do not fall under what’s called Chevron deference, a matter of case law in which — for lack of a better phrase — the tie goes to the agency.

Legal Insurrection readers may recall that implementation of the rule led to a Wyoming farmer being fined $37,500 a day for constructing a stock pond on his own property.

The Trump administration had scuttled the rule back on January of this year, but, of course, was then faced with tons of lawsuits by the Big Government type groups who are happy for the Central Government to control every bit of water in the U.S.A. Regardless, remanding it back to the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers means little, because the rule was killed, but, this ruling by Judge Wood will make it harder for the unhinged Authoritarian leaning “environmental” groups to stop the full kill-off of the rule.