Professor Frank Comments on Supreme Court Ruling for NY Post
Professor of Environmental Practice Richard Frank commented for the New York Post on Sackett v. EPA, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that landowners are entitled to a hearing in order to contest the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to fine them under the Clean Water Act. The ruling, while unanimous, was narrow, Frank noted.
"The federal government can take a measure of comfort from the fact that the Supreme Court's decision in Sackett couldn't have been much narrower," Frank stated. "The justices ultimately declined to address the constitutional issue they had originally directed the parties to brief: whether denying the Sacketts pre-enforcement judicial review of EPA's administrative compliance order violates their right to due process. (Had the Court predicated its decision on due process grounds, it would have implicated a wide array of environmental- and non-environmental-enforcement programs administered by federal regulators.)"
Frank, a 1974 graduate of King Hall, is a leader in the field of environmental law and the founding Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis School of Law.