An Alabama-led effort to uphold Trump-era Endangered Species Act regulations has prevailed in federal court, Attorney General Steve Marshall announced Tuesday.
Marshall, who was recently elected chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, notched a victory against environmental groups that sought to revive Obama-era enforcement of the act.
The federal court’s decision will serve to preserve nationwide enforcement of the Trump administration’s reform to the law, according to the attorney general’s office.
“In 2016, Alabama led a coalition of states to challenge unlawful environmental regulations by the Obama administration that went far beyond what the text of the Endangered Species Act allowed and imposed unfair burdens on private property rights,” said Marshall in a release. “That case settled in 2018 when the federal government promised to reconsider the rules.”
According to Marshall, the court’s ruling is a victory for property owners as well as Alabama wildlife.
“As promised, in 2019 the Trump administration enacted new regulations that made the Endangered Species Act work better to protect both wildlife and property rights,” he said. “The regulations eased burdens on landowners while providing them incentives to care for the wildlife on their property — a win-win for Alabama’s landowners and the great diversity of wildlife in our State.”
Alabama’s chief law enforcement officer detailed the state’s efforts to push back against challenges brought forth by “radical environmental groups.”
“Predictably, the Trump regulations were challenged in federal court in California by a set of radical environmental groups and blue states who opposed the regulations’ cooperative approach to environmental protection,” said Marshall. “In response, Alabama once again led another coalition of states to intervene to defend the rules. That turned out to be necessary because the Biden administration abandoned defense of the rules, and the federal court vacated them, despite never having identified any legal infirmity with them. We sought relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which agreed that the district court had erred.
“Yesterday, the district court again remanded the rules to the federal agencies to consider as they work on proposing a new set of regulations. But this time the court rejected the environmental groups’ request to vacate the challenged regulations, meaning the Trump regulations will remain in place until new regulations are finalized—a process that is expected to take two years as the agencies provide time for stakeholders, including states and landowners, to provide comments on any proposed changes.”
Thanks to the legal efforts of Republican attorneys general, Marshall said “the rule of law was vindicated.”
“Without our intervention, the rules we fought so hard for likely would have been unlawfully vacated as the Biden administration rolled over to appease the environmental groups,” he said. “And stakeholders likely would have been deprived of their right to participate in the process of shaping any changes to current rules. But because we were there, the rule of law was vindicated.”
Marshall’s was joined by attorneys general from Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, as well as the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, in defending the Trump-era Endangered Species Act reforms.
Dylan Smith is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
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