Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf
Page Number: 64.0

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

3 

KAGAN, J., concurring in judgment 

omitted).  Wetlands thus “function as integral parts of the 
aquatic  environment”—protecting  neighboring  water  if
themselves  healthy,  imperiling  neighboring  water  if  in-
stead degraded.   Id., at 135.  At  the same time, wetlands 
play a crucial part in flood control (if anything, more needed 
now  than  when  the  statute  was  enacted).  And  wetlands 
perform those functions, as JUSTICE KAVANAUGH explains,
not only when they are touching a covered water but also
when they are separated from it by a natural or artificial 
barrier—say, a berm or dune or dike or levee.  See post, at 
12–13 (giving examples).  Those barriers, as he says, “do not 
block all water flow,” and in fact are usually evidence of a 
significant connection between the wetland and the water. 
Ibid.  Small wonder, then, that the Act—as written, rather 
than as read today—covers wetlands with that kind of con-
nection.  Congress chose just the word needed to meet the
Act’s objective.  A wetland is protected when it is “adjacent” 
to  a  covered  water—not  merely  when  it  is  “adjoining”  or 
“contiguous”  or  “touching,”  or  (in  the  majority’s  favorite
made-up  locution)  has  a  “continuous  surface  connection.”
See, e.g., ante, at 27. 

Today’s majority, though, believes Congress went too far.
In the majority’s view, the Act imposes unjustifiably “crush-
ing  consequences”  for  violations  of  its  terms.  Ante,  at  3. 
And many of those violations, it thinks, are of no real con-
cern, arising from “mundane” land-use conduct “like mov-
ing dirt.”  Ante, at 13.  Congress, the majority scolds, has 
unleashed the EPA to regulate “swimming pools[ ] and pud-
dles,” wreaking untold havoc on “a staggering array of land-
owners.”  Ante, at 1, 13.  Surely something has to be done;
and who else to do it but this Court?  It must rescue prop-
erty owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pol-
lution control. 

So  the  majority  shelves  the  usual  rules  of  interpreta-
tion—reading  the  text,  determining  what  the  words  used 
there  mean,  and  applying  that  ordinary  understanding