Supreme Court limits regulation of some US wetlands, making it easier to develop and destroy them

The Supreme Court is curtailing the federal government’s power to protect some wetlands. A decision Thursday weakens the Clean Water Act, a bedrock environmental law. It will make it easier for farmers and developers to fill, dig up or otherwise disturb wetlands near rivers, lakes and streams. Experts say it continues a pattern by the court’s conservative majority to limit environmental laws and federal agency powers. The court’s liberals say the majority got the political solution it wanted by ignoring what Congress wrote. States may become a battleground as they write their own laws, with red states and blue states taking different approaches to protecting wetlands.