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Supreme Court’s Narrow Ruling Keeps Citizen’s Right to Challenge Unlawful Government Regulations
But Justice’s limited ruling lets stand the Bush administration’s regulation that prevents the public from reviewing destructive activities in national forests.
On March 3, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a very limited 5-4 decision, reversed
the lower courts’ findings that had overturned a Bush administration
rule that denied citizens the right to have a voice in the management
of national forests. (Summers v. Earth Island Institute). However, the
Court rejected the Bush administration’s attempt to create a broad
ruling that would have severely limited citizens the right to challenge
any unlawful government regulation.
“We are disappointed that
the Court reinstated these harmful forest regulations,” said Matt
Kenna, the WELC attorney who argued the case before the Court.
“However, the Court’s ruling was narrow in scope and did not accept any
of the government's broad theories that would have precluded citizens
from challenging a federal regulation except when applied to a specific
project. This was the most critical issue at stake- if the government
had prevailed on its theory, citizens would have had to file thousands
of individual suits to challenge harmful regulations on a case-by-case
basis while the government could continue to apply the regulation even
in the face of multiple court rulings finding the regulation
unlawful.”