Court Sides With Property Owners Over EPA

cnbc.com ^ | 3/21/12 | AP

[ColdOne]

The Supreme Court has sided with an Idaho couple in a property rights case, ruling they can go to court to challenge an Environmental Protection Agency order that blocked construction of their new home and threatened fines of more than $30,000 a day.

Wednesday's decision is a victory for Mike and Chantell Sackett, whose property near a scenic lake has sat undisturbed since the EPA ordered a halt in work in 2007. The agency said part of the property was a wetlands that could not disturbed without a permit.

In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court rejected EPA's argument that allowing property owners quick access to courts to contest orders like the one issued to the Sacketts would compromise the agency's ability to deal with water pollution.

[AlmaKing]

Where’s the HAHA boy from the Simpsons?

[PGR88]

[Semper911]

So nice of them to grant permission for these citizens to have their day in court.

It feels like we are living in a country without a Constitution, and we live at the whim of the bureaucrats.

[Sacajaweau]

I watched the EPA torture a 90 year old man whose family had owned the property for 150 years....and the property had, in its day, a huge house and a peach orchard on the “so called” wetlands.

[samadams2000]

Everyone involved in this should be named and shamed, bancrupted and arrested. In the old days when someone tried to take your life and liberty you settled it immediately.

[duckman]

Who is going to pay their legal fees up to this point. I don’t think you can sue the govt?

[Gene Eric]

+1 for the citizens.
-1 for the assholes

[Buckeye McFrog]

I particularly saw them wreak havoc in Michigan, where one could argue the entire state is a wetland.