The Supreme Court REIGNS IN Judges Over Environmental Excuses (8-0) “Drill, Baby, Drill!?”

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The Supreme Court just ruled to put judges on notice!

The tendency of activist judges to crush infrastructure and energy projects over extreme environmental concerns just got called out in a SHOCKING 8-0 vote.

I can hear the astonished response now: “Even the LIBERAL JUDGES voted for that!?”

YES! — but for a different reason than the others.  (We’ll get to that in a moment, because I don’t trust them on this.)

What this means is that the usual nightmare of red-tape facing every critical project of national or regional importance is going to be harder for activist judges to use for blocking those projects than in recent decades.

If you count the judges in this photo, you’ll see the usual 9:

 

But one of those judges didn’t vote, and actually recused himself from the case.

He didn’t explain why, but rumor has it Gorsuch’s connections to a certain Utah-based billionaire with a stake in this case was the reason he opted out. (We’ll get to that, too.)

This ruling “slightly curbs” the overreach of the courts in cases revolving around the environmental impact of big projects like drilling for oil, putting in rail lines, or constructing pipelines.

The ruling came down this morning, with Kavanaugh authoring the UNANIMOUS opinion according to a Fox News report:

The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the authority of judges to block infrastructure projects due to environmental concerns.

The justices handed down the lone decision Thursday morning, slightly curbing judicial authority at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is loudly complaining about alleged judicial overreach.

“NEPA does not allow courts, ‘under the guise of judicial review’ of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion of the court.

“Courts should afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness,” the opinion continued.

Thursday’s decision was an 8-0 ruling, with Justice Neil Gorsuch taking no part in the consideration of the case. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett joined with Kavanaugh’s opinion.

That wording is hard to misinterpret, even for us folks who never opted for a law degree.

“…does not allow courts…”

“…the guise of judicial review…”

“…should afford substantial deference…”

“…should not micromanage…”

Those phrases are music to Conservative ears!

One person whose ability to do his job that will be impacted immediately by this ruling is President Trump’s FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr.

Drilling, transporting, and refining oil isn’t the only thing impacted with this ruling. (Though they certainly are impacted!)

Advancements in technologies related to communications like internet and satellite-fed television transmissions generally require ground-based projects to support those advancements.

That’s the FCC’s area of regulation — but allowing a certain degree of DEREGULATION to occur in order to remove roadblocks to those technological advancements requires cutting the red tape.

And that’s EXACTLY what this ruling will do, among other things.

FCC Chairman Carr took to social media to express his excitement over today’s decision:

But one key energy-related infrastructure project was even more immediately impacted by today’s ruling.

At the heart of this case was a railway the federal government wanted to install in Utah to increase the ability to transport oil.

That project was held up by judges on the basis of potential impact on theoretical “future project”, as Kavanaugh went on to address in his opinion, as reported by The Hill:

NEPA requires the government to consider the impacts of proposed infrastructure projects, ranging from highways to pipelines.

At issue in the case was a federal government’s assessment of a proposed railway line to ship oil in Utah.

A lower court ruled the government’s review was inadequate because it did not fully consider the impacts of increased oil production and refining that could occur as a result of the railway project. The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, disagreed.

“When the effects of an agency action arise from a separate project—for example, a possible future project or one that is geographically distinct from the project at hand—NEPA does not require the agency to evaluate the effects of that separate project,” he wrote.

The opinion also reins in the power of federal courts to block projects along similar grounds.

Kavanaugh’s opinion literally called out the judicial activists who argued that there might be MORE OIL PRODUCTION as a result of this rail project, and the ability to move more oil… and that was somehow a bad thing.

Thankfully, Kavanaugh (and 7 other Justices!) called BS.

One US Senator from Utah (a Republican) took to social media and emphasized the impact this would have on President Trump’s plan to make America ENERGY DOMINANT again.

Just like he did during his first term, in case anyone forgot!

Here’s his post celebrating now that the ‘litigious groups’ that kept America from becoming energy dependent have now had their knees swept out from under them, which will now allow the railway project in his state to go forward:

Here’s a more detailed report on that rail project in Utah, and the implications for oil deliveries to the rest of the nation, from the local Fox News affiliate:

As I stated earlier, even the three Justices known for being the liberals on the high court voted in favor of limiting judge’s ability to throw the brakes on these types of projects.

I can promise you — it isn’t because they suddenly became conservative-minded Trump-supporting members of the MAGA movement.

In fact, I wonder if they didn’t have an ulterior motive for siding with the rest of the Justices, knowing that the ruling was going to pass anyway.

Here’s the ‘official’ reason they gave for voting against judicial overreach in this circumstance, as explained in this article from CNN:

The National Environmental Policy Act, signed by President Richard Nixon, is considered one of the foundational environmental laws formed at the beginning of the modern environmental movement.

Kavanaugh wrote that the environmental question at issue in the case – an 88-mile railway that would carry waxy crude oil from the Uinta Basin in Utah to existing rail networks – was “not close.”

“Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock,” he later added. “The goal of the law is to inform agency decisionmaking, not to paralyze it.”

The court’s three liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed with the outcome of the case but had different reasoning. Writing for the three, Sotomayor said that such environmental reviews conducted by federal agencies should be limited to their own expertise. The Surface Transportation Board, which conducted the review in this case, is primarily focused on transportation projects, not oil refining. (Emphasis added.)

Did you catch that?

I suspect Sotomayor let the cat out of the bag on her reasoning.

I’ll contend that she and the other 2 liberal Justices didn’t care one bit about “judicial overreach”.

They are some of the judges consistently engaging in that same “overreach”!

Their reasoning was more in line with a top-down view of governance; you know — centralized planning and “experts” put in charge of all the rest of us in a utopian system of PRAGMATIC governance.

She wasn’t worried whether the judges had the authority to stop those projects, only that the specific agency that tried to stop this project wasn’t the right “expert” that should have been handling this case.

Those three would have been perfectly fine with this overreach, if only the RIGHT EXPERT would have done the overreaching!

Her separate opinion representing the specific reasoning of those three liberal Justices was their way of saying “we don’t agree with the limited government folks”.

And yet, since they voted to restrict those judges (which was going to happen with or without their support) their vote allowed them a chance to pretend that this was more about WHO was allowed to impose judicial control, as opposed to whether that control is allowable at all.

Maybe I’m missing something, but that’s my take.  Sneaky!

For the time being, it won’t matter.

Critical projects necessary for the national development President Trump wants to put on the front burner during this term in office can now go forward with far less obstacles.

Eventually, those liberal Justices will try to bring their skewed version of today’s ruling back in to play, when some other litigation pops up.

But for now, it’s “Build, Baby, Build”… an “DRILL, BABY, DRILL”!

Tally that up for a HUGE WIN for the Trump Administration, and the nation!



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