Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf
Page Number: 56.0

22 

SACKETT v. EPA 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

authority, SWANCC noted that any broader interpretation 
would raise “significant constitutional and federalism ques-
tions”  and  “result  in  a  significant  impingement  of  the
States’ traditional and primary authority over land and wa-
ter use.”  531 U. S., at 174.  Both in its holdings and in its 
mode of analysis, SWANCC cannot be reconciled with the 
agencies’  sharp  departure  from  the  centuries-old  under-
standing of navigability and the traditional limits of Con-
gress’ channels-of-commerce authority.

In  sum,  the  plain  text  of  the  CWA  and  our  opinion  in 
SWANCC demonstrate that the CWA must be interpreted
in  light  of  Congress’  traditional  authority  over  navigable 
waters.  See  Albrecht  &  Nickelsburg  11055  (noting  that 
SWANCC “states more than once that Congress’ use of the 
term ‘navigable waters’ signifies that Congress intended to
exercise  its  traditional  authority  over  navigable  waters, 
and not its broader power over all things that substantially 
affect commerce”).  Yet, for decades, the EPA (of its own li-
cense)  and  the  Corps  (under  the  compulsion  of  an  unrea-
soned  and  since  discredited  District  Court  order)  have  is-
sued  substantively  identical  regulatory  definitions  of  “the 
waters of the United States” that completely ignore naviga-
bility and instead expand the CWA’s coverage to the outer 
limits of the Court’s New Deal-era Commerce Clause prec-
edents. 

III 
This case demonstrates the unbounded breadth of the ju-
risdiction that the EPA and the Corps have asserted under 
the CWA.  The regulatory definition applied to the Sacketts’ 
property  declares  “intrastate”  waters,  wetlands,  and  vari-
ous other wet things to be “waters of the United States” if
their “use, degradation or destruction . . . could affect inter-

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than a negative inference from a parenthetical in a subsection that pre-
serves state authority, is counterintuitive to say the least.