The Supreme Court opened its new session Monday by hearing oral arguments in a case that could roll back protections for more than 50 percent of the nation's wetlands and thousands of other federally regulated bodies of water.
The suit, Sackett v. EPA, challenges a definition at the heart of the Clean Water Act, a landmark 1972 law that prevents the discharge of hazardous substances – from oil and chemicals to rock and sand – into the "navigable waters of the United States."
