Supreme Court unanimously strikes down Waters of the US regulation

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the EPA overstepped its authority in their ruling in Sackett v. EPA. In Justice Alito's majority opinion, he wrote "Petitioners Michael and Chantell Sackett purchased property near Priest Lake, Idaho, and began backfilling the lot with dirt to prepare for building a home. The Environmental Protection Agency informed the Sacketts that their property contained wetlands and that their backfilling violated the Clean Water Act, which prohibits discharging pollutants into 'the waters of the United States.'"

Justice Alito continued, saying "The EPA ordered the Sacketts to restore the site, threatening penalties of over $40,000 per day. The EPA classified the wetlands on the Sacketts' lot as 'waters of the United States' because they were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake. The Sacketts sued, alleging that their property was not 'waters of the United States.' The District Court entered summary judgment for the EPA. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that the CWA covers wetlands with an ecologically significant nexus to traditional navigable waters and that the Sacketts’ wetlands satisfy that standard.

Alito "Held:" The CWA’s use of 'waters' in §1362(7) refers only to “geographic[al] features that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes' and to adjacent wetlands that are 'indistinguishable' from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection."

Ed Morrissey's HotAir article quotes from this CBS article:

In an opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito in the case known as Sackett v. EPA, the high court found that the agency’s interpretation of the wetlands covered under the Clean Water Act is "inconsistent" with the law's text and structure, and the law extends only to “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies of water that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right."

Five justices joined the majority opinion by Alito, while the remaining four — Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — concurred in the judgment.

The decision from the conservative court is the latest to target the authority of the EPA to police pollution. On the final day of its term last year, the high court limited the agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, dealing a blow to efforts to combat climate change.

Apparently, this CBS legal 'expert' hasn't learned that states regulate pollution, too:

This case has been going through the court system for over a decade. Here's Ed's perspective on the lawsuit:

Eleven years later, the Supreme Court finally and unanimously acted, although four justices didn’t want to use the case to set precedent. This time the court has set a clear definition for "waters of the United States" in relation to EPA jurisdiction, and ruled that it has to be limited to bodies of water with consistent and permanent connection to navigable bodies of water that would otherwise also fall under federal jurisdiction. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the controlling and precedential opinion:

First, this Court "require[s] Congress to enact exceedingly clear language if it wishes to significantly alter the balance between federal and state power and the power of the Government over private property."

The heart of the matter is this: the EPA kept appropriating authority for itself that Congress didn't give it. When agencies, bureaus and other governmental bodies are created by legislation, those bodies only have the authorities written into the legislation. Anything beyond that is forbidden. This ruling sets the stage for overturning the Chevron rule:

So what’s next? The Supreme Court has taken up a case for next term, Loper Bright, that challenges the Chevron doctrine requiring courts to defer to federal agencies for definition of terms and application of rules. This court appears far more skeptical than ever about federal agencies and their “definitions” when it comes to setting their own authority and jurisdictions. Sackett yanked that chain back on the EPA; Loper Bright might do the same for the entire federal bureaucracy.

It's time to start trimming the government down to its statutory size. It's gotten to the point where agencies think that they can do whatever they want to do. That's got to stop ASAP. The Constitution is put into place to restrict government, not people.