Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.

I'm John Carlo Canoparo. I'm Zach Smith. And welcome to Scotus 101, where we break down what's

happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our

favorite branch of government.

Welcome back to SCOTUS 101.

It's another week and another batch of opinions.

Not as many as last week, but we did get a few big ones.

I'll start us off with the first one, Sackett versus the EPA.

This was a unanimous judgment, though not unanimous reasoning.

The opinion was written by Justice Alito, joined by the chief, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett,

holding that the Environmental Protection Agency abused its power in blocking the Sackets from building their home on a piece of land near Priest Lake, Idaho.

As you probably recall from our episode when this case was argued,

the Sacketts bought a piece of property not far from Priest Lake and wanted to build a house on it.

They got all the permits, but the federal government swooped in at the last minute and said that they can't build on the land because it contains navigable waters of the United States subject to federal regulation.

Now, this was odd because the Sackett's lot did not contain anything which was anything like navigable waters. But the government said

that it had the power to regulate their land because their land had a significant nexus to

navigable waters. Now, that phrase, that test, is from a solo concurrence by Justice

Anthony Kennedy from a case called

Rapanos. Specifically, the government said that there is a significant nexus between the

Sackett's land and a navigable waterway because their property borders a road and across the road

is a ditch and that ditch feeds into a creek and the creek flows through a wetland

which borders the lake and

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