Once again someone claims Judge Roberts argued that the Endangered Species Act could not be used to protect intrastate species under the commerce clause. This time it’s Noah Sachs, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, writing in the Baltimore Sun. Sachs writes:

Mr. Roberts voted to rehear the case on the grounds that the Endangered Species Act, passed under Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce, could not be used to protect a “hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life” in only one state. (emphasis added)

As I’ve noted ad nauseum on this site, this is not true. (See, e.g., here, here, or here. Indeed, environmental litigators who work in the field have noted this point, and news organizations that have made this claim in the past have issued corrections (see here and here).