Army Corps keeps ignoring the Supreme Court, trapping property owners in a regulatory maze
When Teancum Properties wanted to develop their 22-acre Utah parcel, they did everything right. The construction and development company hired environmental consultants, studied federal regulations, and filed the proper paperwork with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Yet despite their diligence, they found themselves trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare—one that should have ended with the Supreme Court’s crystal-clear ruling in Sackett v. EPA.
The Corps claimed federal jurisdiction over a salt playa and wetlands on Teancum’s West Valley City property, even though these features are separated from any navigable water by a municipal road built decades ago. Under Sackett’s unanimous holding, this road should have eliminated federal jurisdiction entirely. The Supreme Court specifically ruled that “a barrier separating a [water feature] from a water of the United States would ordinarily remove that [water feature] from federal jurisdiction.”
But the Corps isn’t listening. Instead of following Supreme Court precedent, they’ve concocted creative workarounds—claiming the playa is an “impoundment” of waters that would somehow be jurisdictional if the road weren’t there. This flies in the face of Sackett’s clear command that federal authority under the Clean Water Act “encompasses ‘only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming geographical features that are described in ordinary parlance as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes.’”
A pattern of defiance
Teancum Properties filed an administrative appeal challenging this regulatory overreach, but they’re not alone in this fight. Across the country, property owners face similar battles with federal agencies that refuse to acknowledge constitutional limits on their power.
In Idaho, Rebecca and Caleb Linck own 4.7 acres in Bonner County—the same county where the Sackett case originated—and dream of living quietly on their longtime family land. Despite their property being separated from water sources by a 35-foot gravel road with no culverts, the Corps invented a convoluted “wetland complex” theory to assert federal control over 1.13 acres of their land. The agency claimed wet areas on the Lincks’ property somehow connect to another alleged wetland across the road, which then supposedly touches a stream—exactly the kind of fabricated connection theory the Supreme Court rejected in Sackett.
In Florida, Dr. Sedigheh Zolfaghari, a retired pediatrician, was forced to surrender 40% of her property to permanent Corps control based on invalid wetlands claims. When she asked the agency to reconsider after Sackett, they refused, telling her she’s “stuck with those conditions forever” despite the Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the basis for her permit. This case this isn’t isolated bureaucratic confusion—it’s systematic agency resistance to judicial authority.
These cases reveal a disturbing pattern: federal agencies simply ignoring Supreme Court decisions that limit their regulatory reach. Two years after Sackett, the Corps continues applying pre-2023 theories that expanded federal control far beyond what the Constitution allows. Property owners who should have clear guidance about federal jurisdiction instead face arbitrary and unpredictable enforcement that treats Supreme Court precedent as merely advisory.
This regulatory defiance undermines both constitutional governance and economic prosperity. When agencies ignore legal boundaries, property owners cannot make informed decisions about their land. Development stalls, jobs disappear, and communities suffer. The productive use of America’s vast natural resources—the foundation of our prosperity—gets trapped in endless bureaucratic battles.
America’s natural resources are the engine of human prosperity. From the timber that builds our homes to the minerals that power our technology, productive land use drives innovation, creates jobs, and improves lives. When federal agencies trap property owners in regulatory quicksand, they don’t just harm individual families—they stifle the economic dynamism that makes American prosperity possible.
Property owners like Teancum Properties, the Lincks, and others shouldn’t have to spend years and thousands of dollars fighting for rights the Supreme Court already recognized. It’s time for federal agencies to follow the law and free Americans to harness our natural resources for human flourishing.
