I'm Elizabeth Slattery and welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court,

what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

Today, I'm joined by my colleague John Michael Seibler. Welcome back.

Thanks. It's great to be here. This time, my notes say in brackets, whatever you'd like to say.

So I'm glad I'm earning your trust. This week we're talking about the opening of the Supreme Court's new term. And Elizabeth interviewed Judge Tim Kovitch of the Denth Circuit. So the Supreme Court is back. The Scoti's term starts next Monday, October 1st. But of course, before then, the circus has returned to town with the

reopening of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. We're not going to get into the

details of what's going on because the hearing is happening while we're recording this episode.

So with that, let's talk about SCOTUS. Oral arguments start on Monday, and there are three

pretty big cases in the first week. So first up is Wirehouser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This is the Dusky Gopher Frog case.

So, J.M., you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, so this is a big property rights case, and it's really about whether or not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can designate privately owned land as the critical habitat of an endangered species that doesn't

live there and can't survive there unless there are major changes to the land.

Yet still, by the way, the designation may require the landowner to abandon lots of development

projects.

So this all rises under the Endangered Species Act, which requires the government to list endangered and threatened species, of course, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also has to designate the species critical habitat, and that's either occupied land or it can also be species that the land doesn't occupy, but is determined to be essential for the conservation of the species.

Now, of course, the problem here is that this land is privately owned by Wirehouser, a forest

products company, and these dusky gopher frogs are nowhere to be seen on this land.

They haven't been there for 50 years.

The government agrees that you'd have to burn

the land and make other major modifications to it if you wanted the Frogster survive there.

And it so happens that this land in question is in Louisiana. It happens to be above sea level,

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