Victory: PLF and People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners defeat unconstitutional Endangered Species Act regulation

http://blog.pacificlegal.org/2014/victory-plf-people-ethical-treatment-property-owners-defeat-unconstitutional-endangered-species-act-regulation/

 

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Jonathan Wood

For the first time, a federal court has struck down federal regulation of a species under the Endangered Species Act, holding that the Constitution doesn’t give the federal government limitless powers. People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners members are property owners and local government in southwestern Utah who have suffered for decades under federal regulations forbidding them from protecting their property, their airport, and their cemetery from the Utah prairie dog. The problem, for the federal government, is that the species is only found in this small area of Utah and has nothing to do with the nation’s $15 trillion economy. Yet, the government attempted to justify its intrusion into this local matter based on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.
This is not only a big win for them, but for all Americans who believe in limited government. From the court’s decision:

Although the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to do many things, it does not authorize Congress to regulate takes of a purely intrastate species that has no substantial effect on interstate commerce. Congress similarly lacks authority through the Necessary and Proper Clause because the regulation of takes of Utah prairie dogs is not essential or necessary to the ESA’s economic scheme.

One of the most important issues in the case was how far the government could stretch its Commerce Clause power to reach anything that could conceivably have some attenuated affect on interstate commerce. The government and the environmentalists argued that all species necessarily have this effect or any species that has been studied by scientists or might encourage tourism does. According to the court, the government’s theory has “no logical stopping point to congressional power under the Commerce Clause.”
More information about the case can be found here.

Posted in Endangered Species Act, Environmental Regulations, No to Big Government Tagged commerce clause, Constitution, constitutional law, delta smelt, endangered species, endangered species act, esa, Necessary and Proper Clause, Pacific Legal Foundation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners v U.S. Fish and Wildlife, PETPO v USFWS, PLF, prairie dog, regulatory drought, take, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Utah prairie dog permalink