The Supreme Court next year will decide whether the U.S. Air Force’s detonation of munitions on a beach in northern Guam violated federal environmental law — a legal fight that a conservative federal appellate judge last year said should have never been allowed to proceed.
In a short order Monday morning, the justices granted a petition filed by the Trump administration seeking to overturn a ruling by a West Coast federal appeals court that sided with local activists pushing the Air Force to conduct a National Environmental Policy Act review of its operations on Guam’s Tarague Beach.
The Supreme Court’s decision to review the case — which the high court was not required to do — will delay justice for the residents of Guam, said Monaeka Flores of Prutehi Guåhan, the activist group that has sued the Air Force for running afoul of NEPA.
“We continue to carry many scars of war and war games that remain in our landscape, our bodies, and in our hearts and minds,” Flores said in a Monday statement. “We deserve justice for the harms that we continue to endure through the military’s ongoing practice of open detonation of hazardous materials.”
