Supreme Court decisions threaten environmental protections and child labor laws.

Justice Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion in the recent Supreme Court decision on the Clean Water Act would severely limit Congress's power to legislate, endangering countless laws governing private business, including the federal ban on child labor, minimum wage, and workplace discrimination. Thomas argues that the federal government's authority over the "channels of interstate commerce" is limited only to the power to "keep them open and free from any obstruction to their navigation." This approach could gut much of the Clean Water Act and allow a chemical company to dump countless tons of a deadly poison into the Mississippi River.