Judicial Activism Threatens Wetlands

A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit threatens to leave millions of acres of the nation's ecologically critical wetlands without federal protection. In April 1992, in an act of judicial activism, a Seventh Circuit panel used the narrow question presented in Hoffman Homes, Inc. v. EPA as a jumping off point to question the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency, and indeed Congress, to regulate many wetlands. The panel's unjustifiably broad holdings on both the Clean Water Act and the Commerce Clause are seriously flawed. EPA has petitioned the Seventh Circuit for rehearing in this case.