Supreme Court to hear high-stakes challenge to Clean Water Act

...The case, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, centers on a long-running dispute involving an Idaho couple named Chantell and Michael Sackett.

• The couple began their lengthy legal battle in 2007, when they tried to build a home on their land near Idaho's Priest Lake. The EPA determined that the property contained a wetland, and that the couple needed to obtain a Clean Water Act permit or face heavy fines.
• The Sacketts, who are represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, have won at the Supreme Court before. This time, they're calling on the justices to significantly narrow the definition of “waters of the United States” so that their property — and others like it — would not be subject to the Clean Water Act.
• In the famously muddled 2006 case Rapanos v. United States, the justices split 4-1-4 over which test courts should use to determine what constitutes “waters of the United States.”
• Under the test proposed by then-Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a wetland must have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters. Federal courts have favored this interpretation, which informed the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule.
• Under the narrower definition proposed by then-Justice Antonin Scalia, a wetland must have a “continuous surface connection” to "relatively permanent" waters. Business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Home Builders favor this interpretation, which informed President Trump's Navigable Waters Protection Rule...MORE