Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf
Page Number: 67.0

6 

SACKETT v. EPA 

KAGAN, J., concurring in judgment 

to stop the EPA from taking the measures Congress told it 
to.  See  West  Virginia,  597  U. S.,  at  ___–___  (dissenting 
opinion) (slip op., at 28–29).  There, the majority’s non-tex-
tualism barred the EPA from addressing climate change by 
curbing  power  plant  emissions  in  the  most  effective  way.
Here,  that  method  prevents  the  EPA  from  keeping  our 
country’s  waters  clean  by  regulating  adjacent  wetlands. 
The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appoint-
ment  of  itself  as  the  national  decision-maker  on  environ-
mental policy.

So  I’ll  conclude,  sadly,  by  repeating  what  I  wrote  last
year,  with  the  replacement  of  only  a  single  word.    “[T]he
Court substitutes its own ideas about policymaking for Con-
gress’s.  The Court will not allow the Clean [Water] Act to
work as Congress instructed.  The Court, rather than Con-
gress, will decide how much regulation is too much.”  Id., at 
___  (slip  op.,  at  32).    Because  that  is  not  how  I  think  our 
Government should work—more, because it is not how the 
Constitution  thinks  our  Government  should  work—I  re-
spectfully concur in the judgment only.