Loper Bright Opens Scrutiny of Forest Service’s War on Wildfires

The US Forest Service is fighting to keep in place a plan to raze the equivalent of 500 Central Parks in California’s forests as wildfires ravaging the southern part of the state put a spotlight on the agency’s management of these natural disasters.

What stands in its way, however, are environmental groups that are relying on a legal strategy that emerged only last year through the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which tossed a 40-year-old legal doctrine that had deferred to federal regulators’ interpretations of unclear laws.

The Forest Service says the massive clearance ...