Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

The Law as Justice Gorsuch Sees It

News Feed
Monday, August 5, 2024

During his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, in March 2017, Neil Gorsuch laid out his views on what makes for a “good” judge. “My personal views,” he said, “belong over here,” and he gestured to his right. “I leave those at home.”But of course he does have personal views—ones that are quite deeply felt. In a new book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, co-written with the legal scholar Janie Nitze, now-Justice Gorsuch describes what he sees as a pervasive and destructive overreach of federal law, which, he says, ensnares far too many Americans in a capricious and complex web.[Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze: America has too many laws]I spoke with Gorsuch by phone last week to ask him why he thinks America has “too much law,” and whether there’s any way to fix that problem without creating worse ones. The transcription of our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.Rebecca J. Rosen: What was your core purpose in writing this book?Justice Neil Gorsuch: I’ve been a judge for a good spell now, and over time I kept seeing cases in which ordinary, decent, hardworking Americans who were just trying to do the right thing found themselves caught up in a legal maze, and in ways that they couldn’t reasonably have expected. And I wanted to learn more about why that was the case, where it came from, and to explore some of the stories behind the cases I see, whether it’s fishermen in Florida, monks in Louisiana, a magician in Missouri. I wanted to explore the human stories behind these cases.What I found was that, simply put, law has exploded in just my lifetime. And of course, law is vital to keeping us free and to our aspirations for equal treatment of all persons. But it also contains an irony—too much law can threaten those very same ideals and aspirations. James Madison wrote about this 200 years ago, and the need to find a golden mean between those two extremes, and I just wanted to reflect on my experiences as a judge about where we stand in that aspiration, that goal.Rosen: Parts of your argument will really appeal to liberal readers, and parts will be very intuitive to conservative readers. I can just imagine a person reading the book and saying, Okay, I definitely agree with him about, say, criminal law and immigration law, but I’m less convinced on environmental law or financial regulation—areas where I think what we need is more regulation. Can you say why you think the quantity of law is the right framework for assessing the law’s danger, as opposed to maybe the precision of law, or even qualitative measures of whether our laws produce the outcomes we want?Gorsuch: Of course, both things are very important. And I’m glad you identified that there is a common thread here, and the concern with the scope and the reach and the number of our laws is something that has always been of concern to the American people on a bipartisan basis. The Trump administration had a rule that if you put in a new regulation, you have to get rid of two others. The Obama administration had a big deregulatory initiative too. President Barack Obama had said in one State of the Union that, for example, when it came to salmon, the Interior Department regulated them when they’re in fresh water, the Commerce Department when they’re in saltwater, and it got even more complicated when salmon were smoked—and that got big laughs, and the fact-checkers got busy thinking maybe he had exaggerated. But they rated it as mostly true because he’d actually understated the complexity of the regulation.If I’m looking for an example of the bipartisan spirit in which I tried to write this book with Janie Nitze, I point you to my good friend Steve Breyer. Before he became a justice, he and Senator Ted Kennedy eliminated an entire department of the federal government—the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). Back before they adopted their legislation in the 1970s, no new airline could come into existence without the federal government’s approval; no existing airline could pursue a new route without the federal government’s approval; they couldn’t change their fares without the federal government’s approval.Justice Breyer and Senator Kennedy held a hearing in which the only people who supported that regime, it turned out, were the agency and the airlines. Nobody thought they could make the change. George Stigler, the famous economist, said that it was an intractable problem, and that the industry and the agency were too powerful to make any change. Of course, if you know Breyer, you know that that’s a challenge for him, not a stop sign. And they did it, and now the American people have met much lower fares, and flocked to the skies in numbers that were unimaginable in my youth. (By the way, the bipartisan nature of these concerns is nothing new. Before Breyer and Kennedy’s reform of the Civil Aeronautics Board, James Landis and William O. Douglas—both fathers of the New Deal—came to be concerned about agency power too, something we write about in the book.)[Read: Biden says goodbye to tweezer economics]So one thing I point to in terms of your question about crime versus, say, environmental regulation, I’d offer just a couple of anecdotes and facts for everybody to consider, all Americans, of whatever political stripe. Currently we have one in 47 Americans subjected to some form of correctional supervision. There are more people serving life sentences today in prison than there were serving any term of incarceration in the 1970s. I think that’s something everybody has to think about, on the one hand.And then when it comes to environmental regulation, just for example, on the other hand, I tell the story of Butte, Montana, in the book. In the 1800s, Butte and the region around it was one of the richest places on the planet. They discovered copper there, and it was vital to our telegraphs and our telephone wires. In World War I, it was vital for bullets—so important that they sent General Omar Bradley to guard the mine. And by the time of the 1980s, the plant had closed and Butte had become an impoverished area, and they discovered that all that melting copper had resulted in arsenic being deposited in a 300-square-mile region of Montana—a huge area.A cleanup effort was started, and the EPA did a very good job with industry, but they set the cleanup standards at 250 parts per million in private yards. And the people of Butte said, Well, hold on. In a lot of municipalities, you can’t even put into the waste dump materials that contain over 100 parts per million. The EPA said, Yeah, yeah, but we consider 250 parts per million an acceptable cancer risk. The people of Butte tried to sue the company; they wanted to clean up their own yards. And the industry—as you can understand—opposed that effort and said, Well, we’re just doing what the EPA says. And the EPA came in on the side of industry.In Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, our Court held—and quite understandably, it’s a reasonable interpretation of the law; I don’t take issue with it, though I did dissent in part—that the people of Butte, Montana, couldn’t clean up their own yards without the federal government’s permission. Of course, we all want clean air, clean water, clean lands. We want a safe environment for all of us, whether it involves technology or cars or anything else. But is there room for consideration about how we’re doing in achieving that golden mean? Where, yes, We have expertise brought to bear, and the federal government plays a role, but maybe the people and the states also have a role to play?Rosen: The Butte story comes up in the book as an example of the too-powerful federal government diminishing the capacity of states and municipalities and citizens to experiment on their own. But, reading it, I wondered whether maybe this isn’t only an example of federal overreach, but also one of just poor regulation. So I could just as easily see making an argument that what we need here is not less regulation, but better regulation.Gorsuch: I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.Rosen: You also mentioned a case where you said you dissented, but you could understand the argument and respected the decision. In your book, you write that sometimes as a judge, you feel that it’s not your role to do anything about this problem of too much law. I was curious if you could just talk more about what you mean by that, and if there have been times where you felt like you had to decide a case against how you would perhaps act if you were a legislator?Gorsuch: Yeah, as a judge, I apply the laws and the regulations lawfully adopted under them as I find them. That’s my role. That’s my job. I think that’s what you want me to do. I don’t think you really want me to legislate ideas from the bench. Nine people in Washington can hardly rule the country as well or as wisely as the American people, in whom sovereignty is vested in our Constitution. There are three magic words that start our constitution: We the people. What a radical idea that was at the time, and still is—that the people can rule themselves and do so wisely. It’s their responsibility—it’s all of our responsibility—to ask these questions about the role of law in our lives, and whether we got it right at the moment. And all I can offer as a judge is my unique vantage in watching cases come before me over the course of almost 20 years.Rosen: In your book, you list 34 examples of “seminal legislation” that you say do “vital work,” including the Clean Air Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Additionally, many of the anecdotes of egregious overreach that you cite came under laws that many Americans consider essential. You mention a fisherman arrested under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which many people believe is necessary for avoiding certain types of financial fraud, and an outdoorsman prosecuted for riding a snowmobile in a protected wilderness area in an effort to get to safety during severe weather conditions. Obviously, many people support wilderness protections, even if they would understand the outdoorsman’s decision in that moment. In an effort to reduce regulation, how do we protect the baby while throwing out the bathwater here? How do we protect the good aspects of our law?[From the March 1970 issue: Job discrimination and what women can do about it]Gorsuch: On that, we’re in radical agreement. All of those laws do vital work. The question that the book seeks to pose is: How do we balance that against some of the excesses? Let’s just explore one of these examples—the fisherman.Let me just flesh out that story. John and Sandra Yates were high-school sweethearts. They moved to Florida, where John pursued his lifelong passion of fishing. He became a commercial fisherman. He worked his way up from deckhand to be captain of his own small boat with a small crew. And they’re out one day, for red grouper. They’d actually been out for quite some time, and they had thousands of pounds of red grouper in their hold. And an official comes up and says, I want to measure all of your red grouper.The official spent the whole day measuring thousands of pounds’ worth of fish. He finds 72 that were undersize. The limit then was 20 inches. All of them were longer than 18 inches, but there were 72, he thought, that were undersize. John disputed that, because he said that the agent didn’t know how to measure the lower jaws of the red grouper appropriately, but put that aside. The agent tells John to segregate the 72 fish in a crate, and he’ll deal with them when he gets back to dock in a few days. That happens, and they come back to dock, and the agent measures the fish again. This time he finds only 69 red grouper that are undersize, and he’s suspicious. But nothing happens—for nearly three years.Three years later, agents surround his house, and Sandra notices them, looking out the window while she’s doing the laundry. They come looking for John. He’s out crabbing; she calls him in. They arrest him. Sandra and John have no idea what this is about, three years later. They take him two hours away and book him in Fort Myers. And there they revealed that they’re charging him with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was adopted after the Enron accounting scandal—an important law that does vital work in that field.What’s their theory of the case? That law says that it’s a federal felony subject to up to 20 years in prison—federal prison—for anybody to intentionally destroy financial documents, accounting records, or other tangible objects that might impede a federal investigation. And apparently the government’s theory of the case is that John threw overboard 72 undersize fish and replaced them with 69 still-undersize fish, and that these were tangible objects in violation of Sarbanes-Oxley.By the time the case goes to trial, guess what the size limit for red grouper is? It’s 18 inches. They still pursue their charges. John winds up spending a very short period in prison—but still, time in jail, over Christmas. He and his wife are at that time trying to raise two young grandchildren. He loses his job and his means of supporting his family. Sandra becomes the primary breadwinner. They live in a double-wide trailer now.But Sandra won’t give up. She says, What was done to us here shouldn’t happen to other people. They pursued the matter all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. They win 5–4. And they win all the vindication someone can win in our court system. But have they really won? Look at what happened to their lives, the destruction that was wrought upon them.Rosen: There’s clearly a problem here. But where is the problem? Is it with Sarbanes-Oxley? Is it something about the Commerce Department? Is it in the psychology of this one agent who pursued this so far? It seems like there were so many points in this story where this could have been stopped. Why did this even make it to trial?Gorsuch: If you’re asking those questions, we succeeded in the book.We have so many crimes today in the federal system that people have lost count. Somebody in the Department of Justice tried to count them all in the 1980s and gave up—it took years. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you go into the federal regulations, there are by some estimates north of 300,000 federal crimes.Madison wrote about this. This is not a new problem. He, the father of our Constitution, and the other Founders, they wanted written law. They wanted people to know what their rights and their responsibilities were. But they also knew that when you have too much law, you actually wind up instilling fear in people and disrespect for our legal institutions, and you undermine the rule of law. And, worse than that, maybe just as bad as that, who can live in a world with so much law? Who can maneuver best? Madison said that the moneyed and connected are the ones who will succeed best in that environment, and it’s the ordinary person who will get caught up in the law more frequently.And it’s certainly true that large institutions can lobby for rules, that their employees sometimes move in and out of government. They can even sometimes capture regulatory institutions.Rosen: This term, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference. As a result, a lot of regulatory disputes will move from administrative-law judges to the courts. But you seem very sensitive to the concern, as you write in the book, and as you were just saying, that we have an access-to-justice problem in the courts. What if the courts also have their downsides? What if they empower people who know how to work the system, and turn out not to be a sympathetic venue for the little guy after all?Gorsuch: There’s a lot packed into that question. Let’s start with Chevron, then I’ll try and address access to justice. So, what is Chevron? Chevron was basically a rule that when a law is ambiguous, the agency gets to interpret it rather than a court.What I saw as a judge in my experience, and what many other federal judges reported, and the Court ultimately found, is that Chevron places a systemic weight on the scale of justice in favor of the government against individuals. Lady Justice outside our Court sits with a blindfold on, with the scales of justice evenly tilted. And when judges are asked to interpret laws, we’re supposed to do it without respect to persons. That’s what the judicial oath says. All people who come before us are supposed to get a fair shake and stand on equal footing in a court of law. And the government isn’t entitled to systemic bias in its favor.[Read: The plan to incapacitate the federal government]What I saw as a lower-court judge, what persuaded me that Chevron needed to be revisited, was how it impacted ordinary people. I tell the story in the book of Alfonzo De Niz Robles, who’s an immigrant to this country, who is married to an American citizen, and who has four American children. He faced two statutes, one of which said that someone in his shoes could apply for relief immediately. Another one of which said that somebody in his shoes had to leave the country and stay out of the country for 10 years before applying for admission to the country.My court at the time, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, had issued a decision saying that, looking at those two statutes as fairly as we could, the first statute controlled. Relying on that judicial interpretation, Mr. De Niz Robles applied for immediate relief, as any sane person would. Six years later, after sitting on his application, the Board of Immigration Appeals comes back and says, No, the second statute, the one requiring an individual to leave the country for 10 years, controls. The Tenth Circuit got it wrong. And under Chevron, we’re entitled to deference to our views now. That meant Mr. De Niz Robles faced a 16-year-plus odyssey to have his application permission reviewed. I saw case after case after case like that, where the systematic bias in front of the government yielded those kinds of results for ordinary people.Now, turning to the second half of your question, access to justice. That’s something I’ve written about, Janie’s written about in the past, and it’s terribly important. We need to rethink our legal system in which lawyers charge so much money for ordinary legal services that nobody can afford them. I as a lawyer couldn’t afford my own hourly rate. And that—that’s a problem. The book explores several potential solutions or ideas that might help.You raise a question that is whether appearing in front of an administrative-law judge helps somebody, as opposed to appearing in front of a court. Well, when the government’s come after you, would you rather appear in front of a judge with life tenure, who owes no obligation to a political party or anybody else, and is charged with applying the law as fairly and neutrally as he or she can, and you’re entitled to a jury of your peers? Or would you rather go before an official of the very agency that is coming after you? Somebody who is employed by the same agency, where you don’t have a right to a trial by jury, and where the procedures look very, very different than they do in court? It’s no secret that the agencies prevailed before their own administrative-law judge much more often than they do in court. And I just asked, which of those would you rather face when the crosshairs are on you?Rosen: You have written this whole book about law’s overreach. Nowhere in the book do you talk about abortion. For some people, that’s a textbook example of government overreach into a personal decision. So I’m just wondering how you think about abortion in the context of what you’re saying in the book.Gorsuch: I’m just a judge. And I’m charged with applying the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And one important thing that judges have to keep in mind is their limited role in a country where we the people are sovereign. And what in the Constitution entitles me to make those decisions—very complex, difficult decisions? What entitles nine people in Washington to decide them instead of the American people? And the answer the Court ultimately reached is that there isn’t anything in the Constitution that speaks to this question.And in those circumstances, it is for the American people to decide. I have more faith in the wisdom of the American people to decide those questions thoughtfully, and I know that that’s where the right to decide those questions belongs, under our Constitution. And I point out that most Western democracies can resolve these questions in just that way—through democratic processes. We shouldn’t be afraid of taking control of our own lawmaking processes as a people, rather than relying on nine people in Washington to decide those questions for us.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Gorsuch discusses his dream of a legal system that falls closer to the “golden mean”—not too much law, but not too little either.

During his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, in March 2017, Neil Gorsuch laid out his views on what makes for a “good” judge. “My personal views,” he said, “belong over here,” and he gestured to his right. “I leave those at home.”

But of course he does have personal views—ones that are quite deeply felt. In a new book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, co-written with the legal scholar Janie Nitze, now-Justice Gorsuch describes what he sees as a pervasive and destructive overreach of federal law, which, he says, ensnares far too many Americans in a capricious and complex web.

[Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze: America has too many laws]

I spoke with Gorsuch by phone last week to ask him why he thinks America has “too much law,” and whether there’s any way to fix that problem without creating worse ones. The transcription of our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.


Rebecca J. Rosen: What was your core purpose in writing this book?

Justice Neil Gorsuch: I’ve been a judge for a good spell now, and over time I kept seeing cases in which ordinary, decent, hardworking Americans who were just trying to do the right thing found themselves caught up in a legal maze, and in ways that they couldn’t reasonably have expected. And I wanted to learn more about why that was the case, where it came from, and to explore some of the stories behind the cases I see, whether it’s fishermen in Florida, monks in Louisiana, a magician in Missouri. I wanted to explore the human stories behind these cases.

What I found was that, simply put, law has exploded in just my lifetime. And of course, law is vital to keeping us free and to our aspirations for equal treatment of all persons. But it also contains an irony—too much law can threaten those very same ideals and aspirations. James Madison wrote about this 200 years ago, and the need to find a golden mean between those two extremes, and I just wanted to reflect on my experiences as a judge about where we stand in that aspiration, that goal.

Rosen: Parts of your argument will really appeal to liberal readers, and parts will be very intuitive to conservative readers. I can just imagine a person reading the book and saying, Okay, I definitely agree with him about, say, criminal law and immigration law, but I’m less convinced on environmental law or financial regulation—areas where I think what we need is more regulation. Can you say why you think the quantity of law is the right framework for assessing the law’s danger, as opposed to maybe the precision of law, or even qualitative measures of whether our laws produce the outcomes we want?

Gorsuch: Of course, both things are very important. And I’m glad you identified that there is a common thread here, and the concern with the scope and the reach and the number of our laws is something that has always been of concern to the American people on a bipartisan basis. The Trump administration had a rule that if you put in a new regulation, you have to get rid of two others. The Obama administration had a big deregulatory initiative too. President Barack Obama had said in one State of the Union that, for example, when it came to salmon, the Interior Department regulated them when they’re in fresh water, the Commerce Department when they’re in saltwater, and it got even more complicated when salmon were smoked—and that got big laughs, and the fact-checkers got busy thinking maybe he had exaggerated. But they rated it as mostly true because he’d actually understated the complexity of the regulation.

If I’m looking for an example of the bipartisan spirit in which I tried to write this book with Janie Nitze, I point you to my good friend Steve Breyer. Before he became a justice, he and Senator Ted Kennedy eliminated an entire department of the federal government—the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). Back before they adopted their legislation in the 1970s, no new airline could come into existence without the federal government’s approval; no existing airline could pursue a new route without the federal government’s approval; they couldn’t change their fares without the federal government’s approval.

Justice Breyer and Senator Kennedy held a hearing in which the only people who supported that regime, it turned out, were the agency and the airlines. Nobody thought they could make the change. George Stigler, the famous economist, said that it was an intractable problem, and that the industry and the agency were too powerful to make any change. Of course, if you know Breyer, you know that that’s a challenge for him, not a stop sign. And they did it, and now the American people have met much lower fares, and flocked to the skies in numbers that were unimaginable in my youth. (By the way, the bipartisan nature of these concerns is nothing new. Before Breyer and Kennedy’s reform of the Civil Aeronautics Board, James Landis and William O. Douglas—both fathers of the New Deal—came to be concerned about agency power too, something we write about in the book.)

[Read: Biden says goodbye to tweezer economics]

So one thing I point to in terms of your question about crime versus, say, environmental regulation, I’d offer just a couple of anecdotes and facts for everybody to consider, all Americans, of whatever political stripe. Currently we have one in 47 Americans subjected to some form of correctional supervision. There are more people serving life sentences today in prison than there were serving any term of incarceration in the 1970s. I think that’s something everybody has to think about, on the one hand.

And then when it comes to environmental regulation, just for example, on the other hand, I tell the story of Butte, Montana, in the book. In the 1800s, Butte and the region around it was one of the richest places on the planet. They discovered copper there, and it was vital to our telegraphs and our telephone wires. In World War I, it was vital for bullets—so important that they sent General Omar Bradley to guard the mine. And by the time of the 1980s, the plant had closed and Butte had become an impoverished area, and they discovered that all that melting copper had resulted in arsenic being deposited in a 300-square-mile region of Montana—a huge area.

A cleanup effort was started, and the EPA did a very good job with industry, but they set the cleanup standards at 250 parts per million in private yards. And the people of Butte said, Well, hold on. In a lot of municipalities, you can’t even put into the waste dump materials that contain over 100 parts per million. The EPA said, Yeah, yeah, but we consider 250 parts per million an acceptable cancer risk. The people of Butte tried to sue the company; they wanted to clean up their own yards. And the industry—as you can understand—opposed that effort and said, Well, we’re just doing what the EPA says. And the EPA came in on the side of industry.

In Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian, our Court held—and quite understandably, it’s a reasonable interpretation of the law; I don’t take issue with it, though I did dissent in part—that the people of Butte, Montana, couldn’t clean up their own yards without the federal government’s permission. Of course, we all want clean air, clean water, clean lands. We want a safe environment for all of us, whether it involves technology or cars or anything else. But is there room for consideration about how we’re doing in achieving that golden mean? Where, yes, We have expertise brought to bear, and the federal government plays a role, but maybe the people and the states also have a role to play?

Rosen: The Butte story comes up in the book as an example of the too-powerful federal government diminishing the capacity of states and municipalities and citizens to experiment on their own. But, reading it, I wondered whether maybe this isn’t only an example of federal overreach, but also one of just poor regulation. So I could just as easily see making an argument that what we need here is not less regulation, but better regulation.

Gorsuch: I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.

Rosen: You also mentioned a case where you said you dissented, but you could understand the argument and respected the decision. In your book, you write that sometimes as a judge, you feel that it’s not your role to do anything about this problem of too much law. I was curious if you could just talk more about what you mean by that, and if there have been times where you felt like you had to decide a case against how you would perhaps act if you were a legislator?

Gorsuch: Yeah, as a judge, I apply the laws and the regulations lawfully adopted under them as I find them. That’s my role. That’s my job. I think that’s what you want me to do. I don’t think you really want me to legislate ideas from the bench. Nine people in Washington can hardly rule the country as well or as wisely as the American people, in whom sovereignty is vested in our Constitution. There are three magic words that start our constitution: We the people. What a radical idea that was at the time, and still is—that the people can rule themselves and do so wisely. It’s their responsibility—it’s all of our responsibility—to ask these questions about the role of law in our lives, and whether we got it right at the moment. And all I can offer as a judge is my unique vantage in watching cases come before me over the course of almost 20 years.

Rosen: In your book, you list 34 examples of “seminal legislation” that you say do “vital work,” including the Clean Air Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Additionally, many of the anecdotes of egregious overreach that you cite came under laws that many Americans consider essential. You mention a fisherman arrested under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which many people believe is necessary for avoiding certain types of financial fraud, and an outdoorsman prosecuted for riding a snowmobile in a protected wilderness area in an effort to get to safety during severe weather conditions. Obviously, many people support wilderness protections, even if they would understand the outdoorsman’s decision in that moment. In an effort to reduce regulation, how do we protect the baby while throwing out the bathwater here? How do we protect the good aspects of our law?

[From the March 1970 issue: Job discrimination and what women can do about it]

Gorsuch: On that, we’re in radical agreement. All of those laws do vital work. The question that the book seeks to pose is: How do we balance that against some of the excesses? Let’s just explore one of these examples—the fisherman.

Let me just flesh out that story. John and Sandra Yates were high-school sweethearts. They moved to Florida, where John pursued his lifelong passion of fishing. He became a commercial fisherman. He worked his way up from deckhand to be captain of his own small boat with a small crew. And they’re out one day, for red grouper. They’d actually been out for quite some time, and they had thousands of pounds of red grouper in their hold. And an official comes up and says, I want to measure all of your red grouper.

The official spent the whole day measuring thousands of pounds’ worth of fish. He finds 72 that were undersize. The limit then was 20 inches. All of them were longer than 18 inches, but there were 72, he thought, that were undersize. John disputed that, because he said that the agent didn’t know how to measure the lower jaws of the red grouper appropriately, but put that aside. The agent tells John to segregate the 72 fish in a crate, and he’ll deal with them when he gets back to dock in a few days. That happens, and they come back to dock, and the agent measures the fish again. This time he finds only 69 red grouper that are undersize, and he’s suspicious. But nothing happens—for nearly three years.

Three years later, agents surround his house, and Sandra notices them, looking out the window while she’s doing the laundry. They come looking for John. He’s out crabbing; she calls him in. They arrest him. Sandra and John have no idea what this is about, three years later. They take him two hours away and book him in Fort Myers. And there they revealed that they’re charging him with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was adopted after the Enron accounting scandal—an important law that does vital work in that field.

What’s their theory of the case? That law says that it’s a federal felony subject to up to 20 years in prison—federal prison—for anybody to intentionally destroy financial documents, accounting records, or other tangible objects that might impede a federal investigation. And apparently the government’s theory of the case is that John threw overboard 72 undersize fish and replaced them with 69 still-undersize fish, and that these were tangible objects in violation of Sarbanes-Oxley.

By the time the case goes to trial, guess what the size limit for red grouper is? It’s 18 inches. They still pursue their charges. John winds up spending a very short period in prison—but still, time in jail, over Christmas. He and his wife are at that time trying to raise two young grandchildren. He loses his job and his means of supporting his family. Sandra becomes the primary breadwinner. They live in a double-wide trailer now.

But Sandra won’t give up. She says, What was done to us here shouldn’t happen to other people. They pursued the matter all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. They win 5–4. And they win all the vindication someone can win in our court system. But have they really won? Look at what happened to their lives, the destruction that was wrought upon them.

Rosen: There’s clearly a problem here. But where is the problem? Is it with Sarbanes-Oxley? Is it something about the Commerce Department? Is it in the psychology of this one agent who pursued this so far? It seems like there were so many points in this story where this could have been stopped. Why did this even make it to trial?

Gorsuch: If you’re asking those questions, we succeeded in the book.

We have so many crimes today in the federal system that people have lost count. Somebody in the Department of Justice tried to count them all in the 1980s and gave up—it took years. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you go into the federal regulations, there are by some estimates north of 300,000 federal crimes.

Madison wrote about this. This is not a new problem. He, the father of our Constitution, and the other Founders, they wanted written law. They wanted people to know what their rights and their responsibilities were. But they also knew that when you have too much law, you actually wind up instilling fear in people and disrespect for our legal institutions, and you undermine the rule of law. And, worse than that, maybe just as bad as that, who can live in a world with so much law? Who can maneuver best? Madison said that the moneyed and connected are the ones who will succeed best in that environment, and it’s the ordinary person who will get caught up in the law more frequently.

And it’s certainly true that large institutions can lobby for rules, that their employees sometimes move in and out of government. They can even sometimes capture regulatory institutions.

Rosen: This term, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference. As a result, a lot of regulatory disputes will move from administrative-law judges to the courts. But you seem very sensitive to the concern, as you write in the book, and as you were just saying, that we have an access-to-justice problem in the courts. What if the courts also have their downsides? What if they empower people who know how to work the system, and turn out not to be a sympathetic venue for the little guy after all?

Gorsuch: There’s a lot packed into that question. Let’s start with Chevron, then I’ll try and address access to justice. So, what is Chevron? Chevron was basically a rule that when a law is ambiguous, the agency gets to interpret it rather than a court.

What I saw as a judge in my experience, and what many other federal judges reported, and the Court ultimately found, is that Chevron places a systemic weight on the scale of justice in favor of the government against individuals. Lady Justice outside our Court sits with a blindfold on, with the scales of justice evenly tilted. And when judges are asked to interpret laws, we’re supposed to do it without respect to persons. That’s what the judicial oath says. All people who come before us are supposed to get a fair shake and stand on equal footing in a court of law. And the government isn’t entitled to systemic bias in its favor.

[Read: The plan to incapacitate the federal government]

What I saw as a lower-court judge, what persuaded me that Chevron needed to be revisited, was how it impacted ordinary people. I tell the story in the book of Alfonzo De Niz Robles, who’s an immigrant to this country, who is married to an American citizen, and who has four American children. He faced two statutes, one of which said that someone in his shoes could apply for relief immediately. Another one of which said that somebody in his shoes had to leave the country and stay out of the country for 10 years before applying for admission to the country.

My court at the time, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, had issued a decision saying that, looking at those two statutes as fairly as we could, the first statute controlled. Relying on that judicial interpretation, Mr. De Niz Robles applied for immediate relief, as any sane person would. Six years later, after sitting on his application, the Board of Immigration Appeals comes back and says, No, the second statute, the one requiring an individual to leave the country for 10 years, controls. The Tenth Circuit got it wrong. And under Chevron, we’re entitled to deference to our views now. That meant Mr. De Niz Robles faced a 16-year-plus odyssey to have his application permission reviewed. I saw case after case after case like that, where the systematic bias in front of the government yielded those kinds of results for ordinary people.

Now, turning to the second half of your question, access to justice. That’s something I’ve written about, Janie’s written about in the past, and it’s terribly important. We need to rethink our legal system in which lawyers charge so much money for ordinary legal services that nobody can afford them. I as a lawyer couldn’t afford my own hourly rate. And that—that’s a problem. The book explores several potential solutions or ideas that might help.

You raise a question that is whether appearing in front of an administrative-law judge helps somebody, as opposed to appearing in front of a court. Well, when the government’s come after you, would you rather appear in front of a judge with life tenure, who owes no obligation to a political party or anybody else, and is charged with applying the law as fairly and neutrally as he or she can, and you’re entitled to a jury of your peers? Or would you rather go before an official of the very agency that is coming after you? Somebody who is employed by the same agency, where you don’t have a right to a trial by jury, and where the procedures look very, very different than they do in court? It’s no secret that the agencies prevailed before their own administrative-law judge much more often than they do in court. And I just asked, which of those would you rather face when the crosshairs are on you?

Rosen: You have written this whole book about law’s overreach. Nowhere in the book do you talk about abortion. For some people, that’s a textbook example of government overreach into a personal decision. So I’m just wondering how you think about abortion in the context of what you’re saying in the book.

Gorsuch: I’m just a judge. And I’m charged with applying the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And one important thing that judges have to keep in mind is their limited role in a country where we the people are sovereign. And what in the Constitution entitles me to make those decisions—very complex, difficult decisions? What entitles nine people in Washington to decide them instead of the American people? And the answer the Court ultimately reached is that there isn’t anything in the Constitution that speaks to this question.

And in those circumstances, it is for the American people to decide. I have more faith in the wisdom of the American people to decide those questions thoughtfully, and I know that that’s where the right to decide those questions belongs, under our Constitution. And I point out that most Western democracies can resolve these questions in just that way—through democratic processes. We shouldn’t be afraid of taking control of our own lawmaking processes as a people, rather than relying on nine people in Washington to decide those questions for us.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Greens promise to force government to spend 1% of budget on environment if they hold balance of power

The minor party makes pledge as Labor faces calls to explain its nature policy and plans for a federal EPAElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageAnywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guideListen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastThe Greens have promised to push the government to boost environment spending to $7.8bn – 1% of the federal budget – next financial year if they hold the balance of power after the election.The minor party made the pledge as Labor faced calls to explain its nature policy after Anthony Albanese promised he would establish a federal environment protection agency (EPA) if re-elected. The prime minister said it would not be the “same model” as one his government abandoned in this term of parliament after a backlash from Western Australia, but released no details.Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading...

The Greens have promised to push the government to boost environment spending to $7.8bn – 1% of the federal budget – next financial year if they hold the balance of power after the election.The minor party made the pledge as Labor faced calls to explain its nature policy after Anthony Albanese promised he would establish a federal environment protection agency (EPA) if re-elected. The prime minister said it would not be the “same model” as one his government abandoned in this term of parliament after a backlash from Western Australia, but released no details.The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said Labor had broken a promise to protect the environment and Peter Dutton “doesn’t even pretend to care”. Bandt said his party’s position was in line with expert calls for a large increase in spending on nature protection to prevent species going extinct and help halt a documented decline in environmental health across the country.Voting 101: The Australian election has been called, here’s what that means for you - videoThe Greens plan included $7.8bn funding in 2025-26 and an additional $17bn over the following three years. If delivered, the commitment would at least double government spending on nature, according to analysis by the Parliamentary Library.The party said the commitments should be paid for by increasing taxes on “big corporations and billionaires” – similarly to its other major platforms, such as adding dental to Medicare.Bandt said “far more public money is spent subsidising [nature] destruction than protection” and the Greens were “the only party with a comprehensive plan to address the biodiversity crisis”.“In a minority parliament, the Greens will keep Peter Dutton out and get Labor to act to protect and restore our precious natural environment,” he said.Australia has more than 2,200 native species and ecosystems listed as threatened with extinction. Scientists and conservationists have described it as a world leader in mammal extinction, and a global deforestation hotspot.Labor promised to revamp the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act – which has been widely criticised as failing business and the environment – and create an EPA in this term, but neither commitment was delivered.Last week it was accused of weakening nature laws after it joined with the Coalition to amend the EPBC Act to protect salmon farming in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour. The amendment was welcomed by the salmon industry, unions and the Tasmanian Liberal state government.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Afternoon Update: Election 2025Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key election campaign stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionAlbanese this week said a returned Labor government would consult the states and industry and conservation groups on new laws and a different EPA model. He said the final legislation would offer “certainty for industry … but also provides for sustainability”.The director of the Biodiversity Council, James Trezise, said the prime minister had not included any detail “beyond a loose commitment to further consultation”. He said the point of an independent EPA was “to deal with the influence of vested interests in decision making”, but that this seemed a “moot point” as vested interests “appear to have the ear of the PM, whether it’s around salmon farming in Tasmania or the design of a new environmental regulator”.Trezise said Labor should again back the recommendations of a review of the EPBC Act led by the former competition and consumer watchdog Graeme Samuel, particularly his call for the establishment of national environmental standards against which development proposals could be measured.Trezise said while Labor was yet to provide detail of what it would do, the Coalition had “so far presented no clear plan for the law reform or the environment, beyond slashing the public service in Canberra”.The Greens environmental policy wishlist includes reforming nature laws, banning native logging, spending $20bn on biodiversity restoration over the next decade and dedicating $5bn over four years to a new “protected areas fund”.

Australians want nature protected. These 3 environmental problems should be top of the next government’s to-do list

Three experts consider what’s required to protect and conserve Australia’s natural wonders, from fighting invaders to stopping habitat loss and saving species.

Christina ZdenekAustralia is a place of great natural beauty, home to many species found nowhere else on Earth. But it’s also particularly vulnerable to introduced animals, diseases and weeds. Habitat destruction, pollution and climate change make matters worse. To conserve what’s special, we need far greater care. Unfortunately, successive federal governments have failed to protect nature. Australia now has more than 2,000 threatened species and “ecological communities” – groups of native species that live together and interact. This threatened list is growing at an alarming rate. The Albanese government came to power in 2022 promising to reform the nation’s nature laws, following a scathing review of the laws. But it has failed to do so. If re-elected, Labor has vowed to complete its reforms and introduce a federal Environment Protection Agency, in some other form. The Coalition has not made such a commitment. Instead, it refers to “genuine conservation”, balancing the environment and the economy. They’ve also promised to cut “green tape” for industry. But scientific evidence suggests much more is required to protect Australia’s natural wonders. Fighting invaders Labor has made a welcome commitment of more than A$100 million to counter “highly pathogenic avian influenza”. This virulent strain of bird flu is likely to kill millions of native birds and other wildlife. The government also provided much-needed funding for a network of safe havens for threatened mammals. These safe-havens exclude cats, foxes and other invasive species. But much more needs to be done. Funding is urgently needed to eradicate red imported fire ants, before eradication becomes impossible. Other election commitments to look for include: increased biosecurity funding, to prevent new incursions long-term investment in eradicating major pests and weeds from key sites support for research into new tools to control invasive species such as feral cats, for which no broad-scale solution is currently possible no reversal or weakening of policies aimed at curbing invasive pests such as feral horses in national parks new laws to ensure threat abatement plans must be implemented adequate funds to manage invasive species across the expanded protected areas system to meet the key global commitment to nature conservation national coordination and leadership to stop the indiscriminate use of poisons that can spread through ecosystems and food-chains, killing non-target animals such as owls, quolls, Tasmanian devils, reptiles and frogs. Stopping land clearing and habitat destruction The states are largely responsible for controlling land clearing. But when land clearing affects “matters of national environmental significance” such as a nationally listed threatened species or ecological community, it becomes a federal matter. Such proposals are supposed to be referred to the federal environment minister for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. But most habitat destruction is never referred. And if it is, it’s mostly deemed “not a controlled action”. That means no further consideration is required and the development can proceed. Only about 1.5% of the hundreds of thousands of hectares of land cleared in Australia every year is fully assessed under the EPBC Act. This means our threatened species and ecological communities are suffering a “death by a thousand cuts”. How do we fix this? A starting point is to introduce “national environmental standards” of the kind envisaged in the 2020 review of the EPBC Act by Professor Graeme Samuel. A strong Environment Protection Agency could ensure impacts on biodiversity are appropriately assessed and accounted for. Habitat destruction at Lee Point, Darwin. Martine Maron Protecting threatened species For Australia to turn around its extinction crisis, prospective elected representatives and governments must firmly commit to the following actions. Stronger environmental law and enforcement is essential for tackling biodiveristy decline and extinction. This should include what’s known as a “climate trigger”, which means any proposal likely to produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases would have to be assessed under the EPBC Act. This is necessary because climate change is among the greatest threats to biodiversity. But the federal environment minister is currently not legally bound to consider – or authorised to refuse – project proposals based on their greenhouse gas emissions. In an attempt to pass the EPBC reforms in the Senate last year, the Greens agreed to postpone their demand for a climate trigger. Key threats to species, including habitat destruction, invasive species, climate change, and pollution, must be prevented or reduced. Aligning government policies and priorities to ensure environmental goals aren’t undermined by economic and development interests is essential. A large increase in environmental spending – to at least 1% of the federal budget – is vital. It would ensure sufficient support for conservation progress and meeting legal requirements of the EPBC Act, including listing threatened species and designing and implementing recovery plans when required. Show nature the money! Neither major party has committed to substantial increases in environmental spending in line with what experts suggest is urgently needed. Without such increased investment Australia’s conservation record will almost certainly continue to deteriorate. The loss of nature hurts us all. For example, most invasive species not only affect biodiversity; they have major economic costs to productivity. Whoever forms Australia’s next government, we urge elected leaders to act on the wishes of 96% of surveyed Australians calling for more action to conserve nature. Read more: Protecting salmon farming at the expense of the environment – another step backwards for Australia’s nature laws Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. Euan is a Councillor within the Biodiversity Council, a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society, and President of the Australian Mammal Society.John Woinarski is a Professor at Charles Darwin University, a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, co-chair of the IUCN Australasian Marsupials and Monotremes Specialist group, a councillor with the Biodiversity Council, and a member of the science advisory committee of Zoos Victoria and Invertebrates Australia. He has received funding from the Australian government to contribute to the management of feral cats and foxes.Martine Maron has received funding from various sources including the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Department of Environment and Science, and the federal government's National Environmental Science Program, and has advised both state and federal government on conservation policy. She is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, a councillor with the Biodiversity Council, and leads the IUCN's thematic group on Impact Mitigation and Ecological Compensation under the Commission on Ecosystem Management.

Why does Leonardo DiCaprio care so much about Australian wildlife?

The actor was an unlikely ally in this week’s fiery debate over an endangered fish – and is, an insider confirms, ‘very engaged’See all our Australian election 2025 coverageGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastWhen a fiery parliament debate erupted this week about Tasmania’s salmon industry, support for the endangered fish at the centre of the fight – the Maugean skate – came from an unlikely corner.Hours before the Albanese government’s controversial legislation to protect fish farming in the state’s Macquarie Harbour passed on Wednesday, global star Leonardo DiCaprio weighed in.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

When a fiery parliament debate erupted this week about Tasmania’s salmon industry, support for the endangered fish at the centre of the fight – the Maugean skate – came from an unlikely corner.Hours before the Albanese government’s controversial legislation to protect fish farming in the state’s Macquarie Harbour passed on Wednesday, global star Leonardo DiCaprio weighed in.“URGENT: This week the Australian government will decide the fate of Macquarie Harbour and has an opportunity to shut down destructive industrial non-native salmon farms, protecting the Maugean Skate,” he wrote in a post to his 60.4m Instagram followers.The shallow estuary off Tasmania’s coast was one of the most important places in the world, DiCaprio said, and “essential for the planet’s overall health and the persistence of biodiversity”.The actor regularly uses his platform to post about conservation concerns in many places around the world – and it’s not the first time he has highlighted the plight of Australia’s threatened species.Earlier this month, he warned clearing in Western Australia’s jarrah forests for bauxite mining, approved by the federal government, would affect species including the endangered woylie and the red-tailed black cockatoo.He has repeatedly raised awareness of threats to koalas, and last year, called on the Australian government to end native forest logging to protect the breeding habitat of the critically endangered swift parrot in Tasmania.He also drew attention to Guardian Australia reporting on land clearing in Queensland, writing in a post: “Australia has the highest rate of mammalian extinctions in the world … The only way to protect the hundreds of threatened Australian forest species is to end native forest logging.”But how involved is the actor and conservationist in the decision to post on these topics to his personal profile?More than people might expect, according to scientist Janice Chanson, the Australasian manager of Re:wild, the conservation organisation co-founded by DiCaprio.“He does 100% have the say on whether the post goes up,” Chanson said. “He is very engaged and he is very informed.”Re:wild, which works on conservation projects around the world, was founded in 2021 when Global Wildlife Conservation, a scientist-led environment organisation based in the United States, merged with the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.DiCaprio sits on Re:wild’s board, whose membership includes Razan Al Mubarak, the current president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). According to Chanson, DiCaprio “speaks to our CEO on a daily basis” and has attended many field trips.Re:wild has staff based in Australia, where it partners with other conservation organisations to support the creation of protected areas, land restoration and species recovery.The organisation regularly creates social media posts on local issues, which a US-based communications team passes on to DiCaprio “to choose if he wants to engage on that particular topic”, Chanson said.She said Re:wild’s Australian work focuses on two goals: ending native forest logging and helping Australia meet its commitment to zero new extinctions.“The Maugean skate is very much at the forefront of the zero extinction target,” she said.“Australia has made that commitment. We’re here to help Australia meet that commitment. Unfortunately what’s happening to the Maugean skate is flying in the face of that.”skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Breaking News AustraliaGet the most important news as it breaksPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionBaby skates on verge of extinction in Tasmania hatched by scientists – videoFor months, Re:wild had been working to have the skate’s Macquarie Harbour habitat declared a key biodiversity area, a global program that supports identification and conservation of the world’s most important places for species habitats.It had posts prepared for a potential announcement. Then on 20 March, news broke that the Labor government planned to rush through legislation to protect salmon farming in the harbour, which threatens the skate’s survival, in the final week of parliament.Chanson said Re:wild decided to bring its posts forward, publishing an urgent message on its own Instagram account, and the communications team asked DiCaprio if he would share it on his own page.“The urgency came when we stressed it’s in parliament right now,” she said. She only realised he had acted on the request “15 minutes after he had posted”.The federal government has faced criticism during this term for delays to promised environmental law reforms that a statutory review five years ago found were necessary in response to the failure by successive governments to protect Australia’s unique wildlife and habitats.During debate over the Tasmanian legislation, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young waved a dead salmon in the Senate, accusing the government of selling out its environmental credentials for “rotten, stinking extinction salmon” on the cusp of an election.Wrapped in plastic: Sarah Hanson-Young waves a dead salmon in Senate – videoThe passing of the bill drew condemnation from environment groups and prompted dismay from the Labor Environment Action Network.As the federal election was formally called on Friday, former Greens leader Bob Brown said the environment had become “the sleeper election issue, awakened by this week’s uproar in parliament”.“By ramming through protection for the polluting Atlantic salmon companies in Tasmania, both [Anthony] Albanese and [Peter] Dutton have catapulted the environment back into the headlines,” he said.

Labor’s grassroots environmental group dismayed by rushed bill protecting salmon industry

The Labor Environment Action Network says it won’t ‘sugar coat’ its reaction after working ‘so hard’ on obtaining commitment for EPAGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastLabor’s grassroots environment action network has told its members it does not support legislation that Anthony Albanese rushed through parliament this week to protect salmon farming in Tasmania, describing it as “frustrating and disappointing”.In an email on Thursday, the Labor Environment Action Network (Lean) said it would not “sugar coat” its reaction to a bill that was introduced to end a formal government reconsideration of whether an expansion of fish farming in Macquarie Harbour, on the state’s west coast, in 2012 was properly approved.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Labor’s grassroots environment action network has told its members it does not support legislation that Anthony Albanese rushed through parliament this week to protect salmon farming in Tasmania, describing it as “frustrating and disappointing”.In an email on Thursday, the Labor Environment Action Network (Lean) said it would not “sugar coat” its reaction to a bill that was introduced to end a formal government reconsideration of whether an expansion of fish farming in Macquarie Harbour, on the state’s west coast, in 2012 was properly approved.Albanese had promised the amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act to protect salmon industry laws in the remote town of Strahan after internal warnings the issue was damaging Labor’s electoral chances in the Tasmanian seat of Braddon, a seat the Liberal party holds on an 8% margin.An environment department opinion released under freedom of information laws had suggested the reconsideration could lead to salmon farming having to stop in the harbour, while an environmental impact statement was prepared.Lean’s national campaign organiser, Louise Crawford, told the group’s members the passage of the bill with bipartisan support on Wednesday night was “not an outcome we support”.“It is one of those incredibly frustrating and disappointing moments as a Lean member,” she said in an email seen by Guardian Australia. “We have all worked so hard on getting the commitment for an EPA [Environment Protection Agency] and environment law reform for such a long time when no other party was talking about it nor interested in it.”The reconsideration of the Macquarie Harbour decision had been triggered in 2023 by a legal request from three environmentally focused organisations to the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek. The request highlighted concern about the impact of salmon farming on the endangered Maugean skate, an ancient ray-like fish species found only in Macquarie Harbour.A Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour. The species is listed as endangered. Photograph: Jane RuckertThe new legislation prevents ministerial reconsideration requests in cases in which a federal environment assessment had not been required and the development had been operating for more than five years. It was welcomed by the Tasmanian Liberal government, the Australian Workers’ Union and the West Coast Council that covers Strahan and surrounding areas.The government has dismissed conservationists’ and environment lawyers’ concerns that this meant it could be broadly applied beyond salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour, arguing it was “a very specific amendment” to address a flaw in the EPBC Act and that “existing laws apply to everything else, including all new proposals for coal, gas, and land clearing”.Crawford said Lean believed it was a “tight set of criteria” that did not apply to most major projects, including coal and gas operations, or to most developments that involved significant land-clearing. But she said the advocacy group would have preferred a solution that allowed the salmon farming to continue while an assessment was carried out.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Breaking News AustraliaGet the most important news as it breaksPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“We do not think activities should be immune from reconsideration if evidence shows they need to be given a federal environmental assessment,” she said. “This underlines the importance of completing the full environmental reform process, and to having an independent regulator.”Crawford urged members to “dig deep” and resolve to help Labor craft improved laws and an EPA in the next term of parliament “despite what happened this week”. She asked them to campaign for a group of pro-nature Labor MPs who Lean has named “climate and environment champs” – including Ged Kearney, Kate Thwaites, Josh Burns, Jerome Laxale, Sally Sitou, Alicia Payne and Josh Wilson – so that the environment “has strong voices in caucus and the parliament”.She noted Albanese had committed to reforming environment laws and creating a federal EPA in the next term after shelving both commitments in this term. “This is Labor policy so should be delivered no question. We will continue to work to deliver this. It’s time. It’s more than past time,” she said.The Maugean skate has been listed as endangered since 2004. Concern about its plight escalated last year when a government scientific committee said numbers in the wild were “extremely low” and fish farming in the harbour was the main cause of a substantial reduction in dissolved oxygen levels – the main threat to the skate’s survival.The committee said salmon farms in the harbour should be scaled back and recommended the species be considered critically endangered.A separate report by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies last month said surveys suggested the skate population was likely to have recovered to 2014 levels after crashing last decade. It stressed the need for continued monitoring.The government announced $3m in the budget to expand a Maugean skate captive breeding program.

Suggested Viewing

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.