Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and 24 other states, including Nebraska, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in support of the Port of Tacoma’s appeal of a ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court which upheld a citizen’s ability to sue individuals for violations of the Clean Water Act.

“We must not allow unelected environmental activists to use lawsuits to impose wake-up mandates, harm farmers, or threaten cities that work hard to keep drinking water clean,” Bird said in a press release.

The original case involved a citizen-led environmental group in Washington, Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, which sued the Port of Tacoma and its tenants for failing to implement stormwater controls in accordance with pollutant discharge permits issued by the state.

In June 2024, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled in favor of the environmental group. That of the court notice said that “even though the (state pollution permits) exceeded the requirements of federal regulations, they were enforceable through citizen action.”

Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote that without existing precedent, “private citizens such as the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance would not have standing to sue” in such cases.

The precedent that determined the court’s opinion was a 1995 citizen action claiming that the city of Portland violated the Clean Water Act. O’Scannlain said in his concurring statement that precedent “continues to expand the position of citizens in ways that Congress never intended.”

Sean Dixon, executive director of Puget Soundkeeper, said in a statement at the time of the decision, it “closes the book on a proposed environmental protection loophole” and will help protect drinking water in his home state of Washington.

The recently filed file Short Bird and other states argue that the decision “interferes with state authority over water resources” and “undermines” the state’s environmental efforts.

This interference, the brief asserts, disrupts the Clean Water Act’s “cooperative federalism” approach that allowed states to “tailor” federal programs to local needs.

The precedent set by the Tacoma Port case would take away a state’s flexibility and ability to experiment with implementing various conservation laws that prioritize what is most important to a state’s citizens given, according to the brief.

A news release from Bird’s office called the citizen suits “politically charged” and said taxpayers would be “on the hook” to pay for the government to defend itself against “woke green activists.”

Bird also argued that the new interpretation could lead activists to “weaponize” the Waters of the United States rule and attempt to enforce “sweeping” point source regulations by suing farmers and cities.

The brief urges the Supreme Court to reverse the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling.

“The states are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case and restore state regulatory power so that farmers and cities are not forced to choose between woke, costly mandates or defense against aggressive legal action,” the press release said. .

Co-signers to the amicus brief include attorneys general from: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina South, South Carolina. Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Distributiona sister site to the Nebraska Examiner in the States Newsroom network.