OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court added one more case to its current docket involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s administration of the Clean Water Act.
The justices have granted review in the case City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency, SCOTUS Blog reported. They will decide whether the limitations in San Francisco’s permit for discharging wastewater into the Pacific Ocean violate the Clean Water Act.
The issue is whether these limitations are too vague and fail to impose specific limits, instead relying on “narrative” limitations that prohibit discharges causing or contributing to violations of any applicable water quality standard and the creation of “pollution, contamination, or nuisance” as defined by state law, the outlet noted further.
The U.S. Supreme Court “quietly” handed American veterans a big win in a 7-2 ruling earlier this month.
The ruling pertained to the GI Bill, and it “could have a massive positive effect on America’s veterans, our communities, and our nation for years to come,” said Tommy Marquez, a Navy vet, former senior House staffer, and current board member of The Pipe Hitter Foundation, a group that assists in the protection of the rights and freedoms of men and women in uniform.
Marquez said that the nation’s highest court ruled that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) improperly calculated GI Bill benefits for retired Army Captain James Rudisill, who now works in federal law enforcement.
Now an FBI agent, Rudisill falls into a group of veterans who have accrued credit under two iterations of the G.I. Bill. One variant applied to those who had served before the attacks on September 11, 2001. After the attacks, Congress passed new legislation regarding the additional benefits.
“Like so many others before him, Rudisill had separated from the military and wanted to use the educational benefits that we all earn while serving our country,” the Navy vet wrote. “However, Rudisill earned his benefits under two different versions of the GI Bill—the one that applied to those who served before the 9/11 attacks, and the one that applied to those afterward.”
The VA informed Rudsill, who served both before and after that terrible day in our history, that when he chose to use the benefits accumulated under the post-9/11 version, he forfeited his benefits under the old version. This decision thwarted his plans to attend Yale Divinity School and pursue a career as a military chaplain, Marquez said.
Instead of yielding to the VA, Rudsill took legal action against it, taking the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor. The landmark decision is transformative for many veterans seeking to broaden their career prospects post-military, Marquez noted.
Marquez went on to explain that he worked in special forces units in multiple countries as a member of the Naval Special Warfare Community, which he described as both “tough” and “humbling.” He noted that his career was cut short after about 10 years due to several injuries, depriving him of the ability to spend a full 20 years in the service and retire. But when he left the Navy, he managed to earn a degree at a local community college using his VA benefits to land a job in the House, serving as “a caseworker, which meant that I could help my fellow veterans navigate the extremely confusing intricacies of paperwork and the unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles that stand between them and benefits that are rightly theirs.”
He went on to say that the Supreme Court’s ruling will affect around 1.7 million veterans “who have built up benefits under both the Montgomery and the 9/11 GI Bills.”