[1] The case was brought by an Arkansas state agency, alleging that federal flood control practices along the Black River had damaged valuable timber on state-owned lands.

[T]he Corps requires a broad ambit of discretion in managing a river over time, and it has to be able to change to update circumstances without exposing the United States to massive liability.

In a unanimous, eight-justice opinion delivered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,[6] the Court ruled that there was no basis in its Takings Clause jurisprudence for such an exemption.

The Solicitor General relied primarily on a 1924 case where the Court had stated that to establish liability, an overflow must be the direct result of "an actual, permanent invasion of the land.

[12] Carrie Severino, writing for National Review, characterized the decision as "yet another unanimous defeat" for the Obama administration before the Supreme Court, which she wrote had "developed a noted pattern of adopting positions that fail to sway even one justice."

Severino attributed this in part to the government's "extreme position", that landowners downstream of a federally managed dam knew the risks of flooding and so should never get compensation, which "went beyond what was logically required to make its point.