In a ruling in which the justices were divided on their reasoning, the U.S. Supreme Court found EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers wrongfully claimed oversight of the wetland on the Sacketts’ property and federal courts erred in affirming the agencies’ jurisdiction;
The 5-4 decision finds wetlands are only protected by the Clean Water Act (CWA) if they have a “continuous” surface connection with a larger body of water that makes it difficult to determine where the “water” ends, and the “wetland’ begins;
The interpretation provides an even more narrow reading of CWA jurisdiction than the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which only protected wetlands as WOTUS if they had “relatively permanent” surface water connections with other nearby waterways and included protections for wetlands that were cut off from nearby waterways by human-made structures like roads or berms;
The Biden administration’s legal defense is further complicated by its new definition of which wetlands and streams qualify as WOTUS, subject to Clean Water Act permitting, and the rule is already on hold in most of the country.
