CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency from implementing its final rule redefining Waters of the United States (WOTUS).
“This is a victory for the states because this rule, if allowed to be implemented, will upset the balance of power between the states and the federal government without clear statement from Congress, “Attorney General Morrisey said. “It’s a decades-long effort by the EPA to regulate purely intrastate waters without the explicit consent of lawmakers. It creates unneeded delays and costs for farmers, contractors, ranchers and anyone who cares about economic activity.”
“You cannot regulate a puddle as you do a river and doing so will never give us cleaner water, which is what we all want,” Attorney General Morrisey added. “This rule would harm jobs and economic growth by taking jurisdiction from states and asserting federal authority over nearly any body of water, including roadside ditches, short-lived streams and many other areas where water may flow only once every 100 years.”
“We’re glad the court saw the case the way we did: this is an attempt from unelected bureaucrats to expand their own authority by broadly defining Waters of the United States.”
In February, Attorney General Morrisey co-led a coalition of 24 states in a lawsuit against the EPA, asking a federal court to vacate the newly published final rule redefining WOTUS and declare it unlawful—West Virginia, Georgia, Iowa and North Dakota were joined in the lawsuit by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.
The Attorney General also pointed out the EPA, through the rule, is violating the major questions doctrine (decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last year in West Virginia v. EPA) by imposing a major expansion of its jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act without consent from Congress.
Read a copy of Wednesday’s order at: https://bit.ly/41pZYVp.
