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Page Number: 20.0

14 

SACKETT v. EPA 

Opinion of the Court 

process.  See 33 CFR §331.7(d).  And once in court, the land-
owner  would  face  an  uphill  battle  under  the  deferential
standards of review that the agencies enjoy.  See 5 U. S. C. 
§706.  Another alternative would be simply to acquiesce and 
seek a permit from the Corps.  But that  process can take 
years and cost an exorbitant amount of money.  Many land-
owners faced with this unappetizing menu of options would
simply choose to build nothing. 

III 
With this history in mind, we now consider the extent of 

the CWA’s geographical reach. 

A 
We start, as we always do, with the text of the CWA.  Bar-
tenwerfer v. Buckley, 598 U. S. 69, 74 (2023).  As noted, the 
Act applies to “navigable waters,” which had a well-estab-
lished meaning at the time of the CWA’s enactment.  But 
the CWA complicates matters by proceeding to define “nav-
igable  waters”  as  “the  waters  of  the  United  States,”
§1362(7), which was decidedly not a well-known term of art.
This frustrating drafting choice has led to decades of litiga-
tion, but we must try to make sense of the terms Congress 
chose  to  adopt.  And  for  the  reasons  explained  below,  we
conclude that the Rapanos plurality was correct: the CWA’s
use of “waters” encompasses “only those relatively perma-
nent,  standing  or  continuously  flowing  bodies  of  water
‘forming geographic[al] features’ that are described in ordi-
nary parlance as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes.’ ”  547 
U. S., at 739 (quoting Webster’s New International Diction-
ary 2882 (2d ed. 1954) (Webster’s Second); original altera-
tions omitted).

This reading follows from the CWA’s deliberate use of the
plural term “waters.”  See 547 U. S., at 732–733.  That term 
typically  refers  to  bodies  of  water  like  those  listed  above. 
See,  e.g.,  Webster’s  Second  2882;  Black’s  Law  Dictionary