This story was updated May 12.
Environmental groups are seeking to intervene in a lawsuit that they say could all but eliminate federal protections for wetlands.
The case before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District in North Carolina challenges the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate “adjacent wetlands” under the Clean Water Act. North Carolina landowner Robert White has argued that the federal government does not have that authority because of last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA.
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The high court ruling dramatically scaled back the Clean Water Act, limiting protections to only those that are next to major bodies of water like rivers, streams and lakes and appear “indistinguishable” from the surface waters.
