Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf
Page Number: 66

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

5 

KAGAN, J., concurring in judgment 

before—actually,  just  last  Term.  In  another case  of envi-
ronmental  regulation  (involving  clean  air),  the  Court  in-
voked  another  clear-statement  rule  (the  so-called  major
questions  doctrine)  to  diminish  another  plainly  expansive 
term (“system of emission reduction”).  See West Virginia v. 
EPA,  597  U. S.  ___,  ___,  ___  (2022)  (slip  op.,  at  2,  19). 
“[C]ontra the majority,” I said then, “a broad term is not the 
same thing as a ‘vague’ one.”  Id., at ___ (dissenting opinion) 
(slip op., at 8).  And a court must treat the two differently.
A  court  may,  on  occasion,  apply  a  clear-statement  rule  to
deal  with  statutory  vagueness  or  ambiguity.  But  a  court 
may not rewrite Congress’s plain instructions because they 
go further than preferred.  That is what the majority does
today in finding that the Clean Water Act excludes many 
wetlands (clearly) “adjacent” to covered waters. 

And still more fundamentally, why ever have a thumb on 
the scale against the Clean Water Act’s protections?  The 
majority first invokes federalism.  See ante, at 23–24.  But 
as  JUSTICE  KAVANAUGH  observes,  “the  Federal  Govern-
ment  has  long  regulated  the  waters  of  the  United  States, 
including  adjacent  wetlands.”    Post,  at  11.  The  majority
next raises the specter of criminal penalties for “indetermi-
nate” conduct.  See ante, at 24–25.  But there is no peculiar 
indeterminacy in saying—as regulators have said for nearly
a  half  century—that  a  wetland  is  covered  both  when  it 
touches a covered water and when it is separated by only a
dike, berm, dune, or similar barrier.  (That standard is in 
fact  more  definite  than  a  host  of  criminal  laws  I  could 
name.)  Today’s  pop-up  clear-statement  rule  is  explicable 
only as a reflexive response to Congress’s enactment of an
ambitious scheme of environmental regulation.  It is an ef-
fort to cabin the anti-pollution actions Congress thought ap-
propriate.  See  ante,  at  23  (complaining  about  Congress’s
protection  of  “vast”  and  “staggering”  “additional  area”). 
And that, too, recalls last Term, when I remarked on special 
canons  “magically  appearing  as  get-out-of-text-free  cards”