Samuel Alito
Role at the time: Associate justice, writing the Court's majority opinion
Response to this claim
Clean Water Act coverage of adjacent wetlands requires a continuous surface connection that makes the wetland practically indistinguishable from covered waters.
“We agree with this formulation of when wetlands are part of “the waters of the United States.””
The justices agree on the judgment for the Sacketts but divide over the continuous-surface-connection test for covered wetlands.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
The reference point is the Sackett majority's continuous-surface-connection restriction on Clean Water Act coverage of wetlands. Alito's majority opinion adopts that test as the Court's reading of when wetlands are part of the waters of the United States, which treats the restriction as the correct rule, so we used Defended or excused. The closest competing label is Challenged characterization; it loses because Alito does not dispute how the test is described but adopts it as the governing rule.