States sue feds over endangered species rollbacks

Filed 1h ago · Via Stateline · The Buffoon Desk

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Aunt Tagonist

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: J'aimelart · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A coalition of 21 attorneys general filed two lawsuits challenging Trump administration rollbacks to Endangered Species Act protections, filed in the Northern District of California. The suits argue federal agencies narrowed the definition of ‘harm’ to cover only direct injury or killing, dropping decades of precedent that also protected the forests, streams and wetlands species need to survive.

A second suit challenges new rules making it easier for officials to skip designating ‘critical habitat’ for newly listed species. State officials, led by Washington's Nick Brown and California's Rob Bonta, argue the changes violate the Administrative Procedure Act and National Environmental Policy Act and ignore the law's ‘precautionary approach.’ The Interior Department says it will ‘vigorously defend’ the new rules, calling the old approach ‘regulatory overreach.’

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Calling half a century of settled practice ‘overreach’ the moment you want to undo it is a move as old as government itself. A fish still needs a stream and a bird still needs a tree, no matter how the paperwork gets reworded. Twenty states plus the District figure that's worth a lawsuit, and it's hard to blame them.

Source: Read the original at Stateline → Scored: Aunt Tagonist · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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