The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to tear up an appeals-court decision that gives the federal government unlimited power to deprive people of their private property in its efforts to protect a population of rodents whose numbers are surging.
The case involves an effort in Cedar City, Utah, to protect residences, playgrounds, an airport and a cemetery from damage caused by the local species of prairie dog.
Federal bureaucrats had designated the Utah prairie dog, a rodent that lives only in Utah but has a population of tens of thousands, as protected....