WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday not to hear a challenge brought by two environmental groups against the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The groups Public Citizen and the Sierra Club wanted NAFTA -- a free- trade pact that effect Jan. 1 between the United States, Mexico and Canada -- halted because officials have made no environmental-impact study of the treaty's effects on the U.S.-Mexican border area.
However, the high court turned down the appeal without comment.
Had the Supreme Court required environmental impact statements for NAFTA -- and, by the same principle, the recent General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) -- it could have held up both trade pacts for years.
In their lawsuit, the two environmental-watchdog groups said that because the U.S. Trade Representative's Office did not include environmental impact statements in its final NAFTA recommendation to Congress, U.S. courts could review and halt NAFTA.
The groups also argued the National Environmental Policy Act required the federal government to create a NAFTA environmental-impact statement.
Although the act does not mention foreign treaties, it does require federal agencies to supply environmental statements when proposing legislation 'significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.'
After U.S., Mexican and Canadian diplomats began negotiating NAFTA in 1990, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club asked the U.S. Trade Representative's Office to prepare an environmental-impact statement on both NAFTA and GATT.
However, officials refused in August 1991, prompting the two environmental groups to file suit.
Courts initially threw out the action, but the two groups filed suit against after federal officials submitted NAFTA to Congress for ratification.
The environmental watchdogs won in U.S. District Court last June, but an appeals court reversed that decision.
