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by Bayron J. Flores-Tapia, Fordham Environmental Law Review, Class of 2021<\/p>\n
As President Trump\u2019s administration continues to dismantle major environmental regulations, the United States Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (\u201cDACA\u201d) program offers a glimmer of hope for environmental lawyers challenging the President\u2019s many environmental rollbacks.<\/p>\n
In Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California<\/em><\/a>, the Supreme Court examined whether President Trump\u2019s administrative approach to abolishing the DACA program, which provides federal benefits and temporary protection from deportation to young immigrants who entered the United States, complied with the Administrative Procedure Act (\u201cAPA\u201d). The Trump administration\u2019s principal justification<\/a> for abolishing the DACA program was that the program was not authorized by law, which is the same explanation that the Trump administration has repeatedly used to repeal Obama-era environmental laws. The Supreme Court ruled<\/a> that the Trump administration\u2019s decision to rescind DACA was \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d under the APA as the Trump administration failed to adequately explain its action and consider the impact the rescission would have on DACA recipients.<\/p>\n \u201cThis decision has profound implications for administrative law and thus environmental law\u201d \u2013 Bob Percival<\/a>, director of the University of Maryland\u2019s environmental law program.<\/p>\n Although the DACA decision did not involve an environmental regulation, the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling has set forth a precedent that many environmental lawyers may use to combat President Trump\u2019s environmental cutbacks. Dave Owen<\/a>, an environmental and administrative law professor at UC Hastings, stated that the DACA decision seems to suggest that \u201cagencies have to explain the things they do, and changes have to be grounded in evidence.\u201d In other words, President Trump\u2019s administration must articulate<\/a> how the public benefits of its decisions outweigh the possible unfavorable impacts, an approach that the administration has failed to adopt. For example, when the Trump administration repealed the Clean Power Plan<\/a>, a climate change policy that limited carbon pollution from power plants, it failed to explain how its decision would not engender adverse consequences to the public.<\/p>\n Several states<\/a> have recently used the DACA decision to challenge President Trump\u2019s contentious Navigable Waters Protection Rule<\/a>, a proposal that would remove environmental protections for streams, wetlands, and groundwater. In their lawsuit<\/a> against President Trump\u2019s Water Rule, environmental lawyers for the states argued that the Environmental Protection Agency failed to consider the states\u2019 and parties\u2019 \u201creliance\u201d on previous water jurisdiction rules that were in place before the administration\u2019s new water rule, an administrative requirement outlined in the DACA decision. This is one of the many ways the DACA decision will benefit environmental litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bayron J. Flores-Tapia, Fordham Environmental Law Review, Class of 2021 As President Trump\u2019s administration continues to dismantle major environmental regulations, the United States Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}