Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-260_jifl.pdf
Page Number: 48.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

15 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

equivalent” standard and favor the test just described.  The 
Court  has  required  a  clear  statement  of  congressional  in-
tent  when  an  administrative  agency  seeks  to  interpret  a 
statute in a way that entails “a significant impingement of 
the States’ traditional and primary power over land and wa-
ter use,” Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army 
Corps of Engineers, 531 U. S. 159, 174 (2001) (SWANCC ),
and when it adopts a new and expanded interpretation of a 
statute, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. 302 
(2014) (UARG).  The same rules should apply here where 
what  is  at  issue  is  a  new  theory  propounded  by  private
plaintiffs.

First,  the  Court’s  “functional  equivalent”  test  unques-
tionably impinges on the States’ traditional authority.  In 
SWANCC, the Court struck down the Army Corps of Engi-
neers’ “Migratory Bird Rule” as inconsistent with the Clean 
Water Act because the rule effectively displaced state au-
thority over land and water use.  In this case, the federalism 
interest is even stronger because the Clean Water Act itself
assigns non-point-source-pollution regulation to the States
and explicitly recognizes and protects the state role in envi-
ronmental protection.  33 U. S. C. §1251(b).  The “functional 
equivalent” standard expands federal point source regula-
tion  at  the  expense  of  state  non-point  source  regulation.
And as a practical matter, States would be saddled with the
costs of increased NPDES permitting (because States gen-
erally award permits in place of the EPA), while exercising 
diminished  control  over  non-point  source  pollution  within 
their territory.  See Brief for State of West Virginia et al. as 
Amici Curiae 27–34. 

Second, the Court’s test offends the clear-statement rule 
recognized  in  UARG  by  expanding  the  authority  of  the
EPA.  Congress must speak clearly if it “wishes to assign to 
an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political signifi-
cance.’ ”    573  U. S.,  at  324  (quoting  FDA  v.  Brown  & 
Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 160 (2000)).  In