Kagan, J., concurring in judgement
omitted). Wetlands thus “function as integral parts of the aquatic environment”—protecting neighboring water if themselves healthy, imperiling neighboring water if instead degraded. Id., at 135. At the same time, wetlands play a crucial part in flood control (if anything, more needed now than when the statute was enacted). And wetlands perform those functions, as Justice Kavanaugh explains, not only when they are touching a covered water but also when they are separated from it by a natural or artificial barrier—say, a berm or dune or dike or levee. See post, at 12–13 (giving examples). Those barriers, as he says, “do not block all water flow,” and in fact are usually evidence of a significant connection between the wetland and the water. Ibid. Small wonder, then, that the Act—as written, rather than as read today—covers wetlands with that kind of connection. Congress chose just the word needed to meet the Act’s objective. A wetland is protected when it is “adjacent” to a covered water—not merely when it is “adjoining” or “contiguous” or “touching,” or (in the majority’s favorite made-up locution) has a “continuous surface connection.” See, e.g., ante, at 27.
Today’s majority, though, believes Congress went too far. In the majority’s view, the Act imposes unjustifiably “crushing consequences” for violations of its terms. Ante, at 3. And many of those violations, it thinks, are of no real concern, arising from “mundane” land-use conduct “like moving dirt.” Ante, at 13. Congress, the majority scolds, has unleashed the EPA to regulate “swimming pools[] and puddles,” wreaking untold havoc on “a staggering array of landowners.” Ante, at 1, 13. Surely something has to be done; and who else to do it but this Court? It must rescue property owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pollution control.
So the majority shelves the usual rules of interpretation—reading the text, determining what the words used there mean, and applying that ordinary understanding
