Ashley Moody says ‘activist litigants’ swayed Alligator Alcatraz judge

Ashley Moody gains endorsements from Brian Mast and Kat Cammack, backed by Donald Trump.

Florida’s former Attorney General and current U.S. Senator is criticizing a decision by a federal judge that orders the shutdown of Florida’s pre-deportation lockup Alligator Alcatraz.

Ashley Moody argued Friday that Judge Kathleen Williams sided with “activist litigants” over the interests of the state in ruling for a cessation of operations on the tent prison erected at a South Florida training airport.

“This is why the public is becoming increasingly frustrated with these … political activist litigants that are using the courts to try and impede an administration from getting the job done that they promised to the American people. And this Obama era judge played right into the hands of these activist litigants and has said, no, you have to shut down Alligator Alcatraz over a rule, a law, that was never intended to address a state facility that was using a county owned land that used by the state that they were going to run to try and help President Trump in this effort,” Moody told Fox Business host Stuart Varney.

The Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe challenged the facility on the grounds of environmental impacts, with the defendants allegedly ignoring federal National Environmental Policy Act guidelines to consider what construction would do to ecologically-sensitive areas.

Moody, a former judge herself, claims Williams misinterpreted the federal guidance, which wasn’t intended to apply to temporary structures, and that the decision is ripe for legal challenge.

“Governor DeSantis will make sure that this is appealed. It really, really should not have applied. This was meant to apply for large infrastructure projects, railroads, where the permanency, the cost could not be undone once it was built if the environmental concerns weren’t considered.”

NEPA makes no distinctions between temporary structures and ones with “permanency,” according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA says it requires “the federal government to use all practicable means to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony …  to incorporate environmental considerations in their planning and decision-making through a systematic interdisciplinary approach” that includes “detailed statements assessing the environmental impact of and alternatives to major federal actions significantly affecting the environment.”