Can the Appalachian Trail Block a Natural Gas Pipeline?, op-ed by Noah Sachs in American Prospect

Lisa Heinzerling previews arguments in County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, a key Clean Water Act case before the Supreme Court in its 2019-2020 term.

Writing in SCOTUSBlog, CPR's Noah Sachs previews the Supreme Court's upcoming argument in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association. The cases pit a pipeline developer and the U.S. Forest Service against environmentalists fighting to preserve the Appalachian Trail.

Writing for SCOTUSBlog, CPR's Lisa Heinzerling discusses the Supreme Court's April 2020 ruling in a Clean Water Act case from Hawaii. The ruling requires a permit when a point source of pollution adds pollutants to navigable waters through groundwater, if the addition of pollutants is "the functional equivalent of a direct discharge" from the source into navigable waters. She writes that "Perhaps the most striking feature of Justice Stephen Breyer's opinion for the majority is its interpretive method. The opinion reads like something from a long-ago period of statutory interpretation, before statutory decisions regularly made the central meaning of complex laws turn on a single word or two and banished legislative purpose to the interpretive fringes."