Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-260_jifl.pdf
Page Number: 42

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

9 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

743–744 (2006) (plurality opinion).5 
—————— 

5 JUSTICE THOMAS describes his preferred holding in similar terms: “[A] 
permit  is  required  only  when  a  point  source  discharges  pollutants  di-
rectly into navigable waters.”  Ante, at 1 (dissenting opinion).  But I take 
JUSTICE THOMAS’s opinion to foreclose liability in one situation where I 
believe  a  permit  would  be  required:  a  discharge  from  multiple,  linked 
point sources.  In my view, a permit is required in that instance because 
a pollutant would ultimately be added to navigable waters directly from
a point source.

Justice  Scalia’s  opinion  in Rapanos,  547  U. S.,  at  743–744  (plurality 
opinion), supports this conclusion.  Rapanos addressed the meaning of
the term “waters of the United States,” and Justice Scalia’s opinion con-
cluded that this term does not apply to “[w]etlands with only an inter-
mittent, physically remote hydrologic connection to [such waters].”  Id., 
at 742.  At one point in his opinion, Justice Scalia responded to the argu-
ment that this interpretation would allow polluters to evade the permit 
requirement “simply by discharging their pollutants into noncovered in-
termittent  watercourses  that  lie  upstream  of  covered  waters.”  Id.,  at 
743.  Arguing that this was not likely to occur, he identified two lines of
lower  court  authority  that would  prevent  such  evasion,  but  he  did  not 
endorse either.  Ibid. 

One of these lines was based on exactly the interpretation set out in
this opinion, namely, that “such upstream, intermittently flowing chan-
nels themselves constitute ‘point sources’ ” under the Act’s broad defini-
tion of that term.  Ibid.  The other line, as described in Justice Scalia’s 
opinion, “held that the discharge into intermittent channels of any pol-
lutant that naturally washes downstream likely [requires a permit] even 
if the pollutants discharged from a point source do not emit ‘directly into’
covered waters, but pass ‘through conveyances’ in between.”  Ibid. (em-
phasis in original).  To the extent these lower court cases are understood 
as  holding  that  a  permit  is  required  whenever  a  pollutant  “naturally” 
reaches waters of the United States, their reasoning would conflict with 
the Court’s rejection of the theory that a permit is required whenever a 
pollutant that originated from a point source ultimately reaches covered 
waters.  But as Justice Scalia noted, in the two cases he cited, the pollu-
tants  were  discharged  from  point  sources  into  “conveyances”  that,  in
turn, brought the pollutants to covered waters.  Ibid.  And the convey-
ances in both cases, a sewer system and tunnel, ibid., could easily fall 
within the broad definition of a point source. 

In short, at least one and perhaps both of the lines of lower court cases 
to which Justice Scalia referred are fully consistent with the interpreta-
tion set out in this opinion.  The same is true of his statement, discussed 
by JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, ante, at 1–2 (concurring opinion), that the Clean