American Land Foundation
For Immediate Release

Contact: Dan Byfield
June 14, 2005

800-452-6389

Supreme Court – ESA has Unlimited Powers

Austin, Texas – In the past two weeks, the Supreme Court has thrown out states rights and private property rights and granted unlimited powers to the federal government.  Gonzales v. Raich, the marijuana case, was last week.  This week, it was GDF Realty v. Gale Norton.  Both tried to limit the power of the federal government by restricting its use of the Commerce Clause, however, the Supreme Court emboldened and empowered them more.

June 13, 2005, the Supreme Court denied hearing GDF Realty v. Gale Norton, giving more protection and rights to six microscopic bugs than to humans or their private property rights.  The American Land Foundation has spent the last five years and almost a quarter of a million dollars funding the lawsuit.  “We’re terribly disappointed and disagree with the decision of the Court,” said Mike Dail, chairman of American Land Foundation.

GDF Realty involved six endangered cave bugs that live on 216 acres of land owned by Fred Purcell outside of Austin, Texas.  The bugs and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have kept him from developing his land for almost 20 years.  Hoping to reign in the enormous federal power under the ESA, GDF sought to prove there was no market for bugs that lived wholly in the state of Texas and there was no economic value that triggered protection of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.  

One of the more curious aspects of the Court’s ruling was that it waited nearly a year just to deny the case.  Some speculate it was waiting to see how the Court fell on the Raich case, while Paul Terrill, attorney for the plaintiff said; “the Supreme Court very rarely takes cases where there is not a true split in the circuit courts - meaning one circuit has decided the issue one way and another circuit has decided the issue in the opposite direction. Here, there was disagreement among the circuits as to the rationale, but the results all upheld government regulation.”

“Given the fact that the Court held our case for almost a year before denying it, even without a circuit split, surely shows there was more than a passing interest in the issue,” Terrill continued.  He agreed to a certain extent GDF was a victim of bad timing by the Raich case, but pointed out “there is obviously an enormous market - albeit illegal - for marijuana; whereas there has never been any commerce of any sort in cave insects. That alone should have distinguished our case.”

Justice Clarence Thomas stated in Raich and holds true in GDF; “If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything — and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.”  The Supreme Court has saved the cave bugs and trampled private property.  How comforting.

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