The Supreme Court takes up a Clean Water Act challenge that could remove federal protections from millions of acres of Great Lakes wetlands, alarming environmental officials across Michigan.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case challenging the scope of the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction over wetlands and navigable waterways, a legal dispute that environmental groups and Great Lakes state attorneys general warn could strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands that filter water entering Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior if the Court rules in favor of the petitioners.
The case, brought by an agricultural coalition from Wisconsin challenging EPA jurisdiction over tile drainage systems that flow into Lake Michigan tributaries, arrives at the Court following a split in circuit court decisions and one year after the Court’s 2023 Sackett decision narrowed Clean Water Act protections. Environmental lawyers said the new case could go even further, potentially removing federal oversight from all wetlands not directly abutting traditionally navigable waters.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced the state would file an amicus brief supporting broad federal wetland protections, joining a coalition of 14 state attorneys general. Nessel said the case represented one of the most significant environmental legal threats to the Great Lakes in decades.
“The Great Lakes hold 21 percent of the world’s surface fresh water, and the wetlands that feed them are the first line of defense against pollution, flooding, and ecological collapse,” Nessel said in a statement. “We will not sit by while federal protections that have guarded these waters for fifty years are dismantled by the courts.”
Michigan has approximately 5.5 million acres of wetlands, the most of any state in the contiguous United States. Environmental scientists testified before a Senate subcommittee last year that roughly 40 percent of those wetlands could lose federal protection under the narrowest interpretation of the Clean Water Act that petitioners are seeking.
Agricultural interests and property rights advocates who support the challenge argued that the current EPA interpretation imposes unreasonable regulatory burdens on farmers and landowners and exceeds what Congress intended when it passed the original Clean Water Act in 1972.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in April, with a ruling anticipated before the end of the current term in June. The case is being closely watched by state environmental agencies, energy companies, and agricultural organizations across the Midwest.
