The majority had “rewritten the Clean Water Act” and ignored its text as well as “45 years of consistent agency practice,” Kavanaugh wrote. Writing for himself and liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kavanaugh agreed that the Sacketts should prevail in the case at hand because their land should not have been covered by the law, but would have ruled for them on narrower grounds without changing the statutory definition at issue: “waters of the United States.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the only conservative who broke ranks. Kavanaugh and liberals say majority has ‘rewritten’ environmental law Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s opinion.Īlito said that the wetland had to have a “continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the water ends and the wetland begins.” “The wetlands on the Sackett property are distinguishable from any possibly covered waters,” Alito wrote, because they are not directly connected to them. As they began backfilling the property with 1,700 cubic yards of sand and gravel to create a stable grade, the EPA sent them an order halting construction. Three years later they broke ground, hoping to build a family home, but soon got entangled in a regulatory dispute. The decision is a victory for Chantell and Michael Sackett, who purchased a vacant lot near Idaho’s Priest Lake. The Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. The Supreme Court on Thursday cut back on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act, with a 5-4 majority continuing a trend in which the conservative-leaning court has narrowed the reach of environmental regulations.
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