Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf
Page Number: 45.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

11 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

304.  This  Court  held  that  the  term  “navigable”  refers  to
waters that are “navigable in fact,” meaning that “they are
used, or are susceptible of being used, in their ordinary con-
dition,  as  highways  for  commerce,  over  which  trade  and 
travel are or may be conducted in the customary modes of 
trade and travel on water.”  The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall., at 
563.  The Court then explained that navigable waters are
“of the United States,” “in contradistinction from the navi-
gable waters of the States, when they form in their ordinary
condition by themselves, or by uniting with other waters, a 
continued highway over which commerce is or may be car-
ried on with other States or foreign countries in the custom-
ary modes in which such commerce is conducted by water.” 
Ibid.; see also The Montello, 11 Wall. 411, 415 (1871) (“If . . . 
the river is not of itself a highway for commerce with other 
States or foreign countries, or does not form such highway
by its connection with other waters, and is only navigable 
between different places within the State, then it is not a 
navigable water of the United States, but only a navigable 
water of the State”).  It is this “junction” between waters to
“for[m] a continued highway for commerce, both with other
States  and  with  foreign  countries,”  that  brings  the  water 
“under the direct control of Congress in the exercise of its
commercial power.”  The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall., at 564.  The 
definition of a “navigable water of the United States” was 
thus linked directly to the limits on Congress’ commerce au-
thority:  A  navigable  water  of  the  United  States  was  one 
that was ordinarily used for interstate or foreign commerce.
Wetlands  were  generally  excluded  from  this  definition. 
In Leovy v. United States, 177 U. S. 621 (1900), for example, 
the  Court  employed  the  Daniel  Ball  test  to  hold  that  the 
term “navigable waters of the United States,” as used in the 
1890 River and Harbor Act, did not “prevent the exercise by 
the State of Louisiana of its power to reclaim swamp and 
overflowed lands by regulating and controlling the current