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Page Number: 4.0

2 

SACKETT v. EPA 

Opinion of the Court 

day  for  each  violation.”1   §1319(d).  And  according  to  the
Government,  when  the  EPA  prevails  against  any  person
who  has  been  issued  a  compliance  order  but  has  failed 
to  comply,  that  amount  is  increased  to  $75,000—up  to
$37,500 for the statutory violation and up to an additional 
$37,500 for violating the compliance order.

The  particulars  of  this  case  flow  from  a  dispute  about
the  scope  of  “the  navigable  waters”  subject  to  this  en­
forcement  regime.    Today  we  consider  only  whether  the 
dispute  may  be  brought  to  court  by  challenging  the  com­
pliance order—we do not resolve the dispute on the merits.  
The  reader  will  be  curious,  however,  to  know  what  all 
the  fuss  is  about.    In  United  States  v.  Riverside  Bayview 
Homes, Inc., 474 U. S. 121 (1985), we upheld a regulation 
that construed “the navigable waters” to include “freshwa­
ter wetlands,” id., at 124, themselves not actually naviga­
ble, that were adjacent to navigable-in-fact waters.  Later, 
in  Solid  Waste  Agency  of  Northern  Cook  Cty.  v.  Army 
Corps of Engineers, 531 U. S. 159 (2001), we held that an 
abandoned sand and gravel pit, which “seasonally ponded” 
but which was not adjacent to open water, id., at 164, was 
not  part  of  the  navigable  waters.  Then  most  recently,  in 
Rapanos v. United States, 547 U. S. 715 (2006), we consid­
ered  whether  a  wetland  not  adjacent  to  navigable-in-fact 
waters  fell  within  the  scope  of  the  Act.  Our  answer  was 
no,  but  no  one  rationale  commanded  a  majority  of  the 
Court.  In  his  separate  opinion,  THE  CHIEF  JUSTICE  ex­
pressed  the  concern  that  interested  parties  would  lack 

—————— 

1 The  original  statute  set  a  penalty  cap  of  $25,000  per  violation  per 
day.  The Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, 104
Stat.  890,  note  following  28  U. S. C.  §2461,  as  amended  by  the  Debt
Collection Improvement Act of 1996, §3720E, 110 Stat. 1321–373, note
following 28 U. S. C. §2461, p. 1315 (Amendment), authorizes the EPA 
to  adjust  that  maximum  penalty  for  inflation.    On  the  basis  of  that 
authority, the agency has raised the cap to $37,500.  See 74 Fed. Reg. 
626, 627 (2009).