Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and attorneys general from 23 other states filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Waters of the U.S. Rule. The group says the EPA’s WOTUS rule “goes beyond the power Congress delegated in the Clean Water Act, raises serious constitutional concerns, and runs roughshod over the Administrative Procedures Act.”
“The administration’s water rule limits the use of land and violates the law and U.S. Constitution,” Knudsen said. “The EPA greatly overstepped its authority by trying to claim jurisdiction over land and water not connected to any navigable water.”
The attorneys general say they’re fighting to protect farm and ranching operations, mining and energy workers, and infrastructure and housing projects across Montana and the entire country that will be harmed if this overreaching and unconstitutional rule takes effect.
“By implementing an overbroad and hopelessly vague scheme, the Agencies have toppled the cooperative federalism regime that Congress intended to protect in the CWA. Core state sovereign interests can be subjugated to the desires of two federal administrative agencies, even as to remote, non-navigable, intermittent, ephemeral, and purely intrastate waters,” the lawsuit states. “Meanwhile, if the Final Rule is left in place, then ranchers, farmers, miners, homebuilders, and other landowners across the country will struggle to undertake even the simplest of activities on their own property without fear of drawing the ire of the federal government. Landowning Americans of all stripes will thus be left with a choice: fight their way through an expensive and lengthy administrative process to obtain complex jurisdictional determinations and permits or face substantial civil and criminal penalties.”
Montana and the other states will motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the rule while it’s under litigation.
Click Here to read the entire suit.
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