This phrase has since led to numerous debates about what water sources qualify, including many legal cases.

While Justice Anthony Kennedy joined in the Court's decision, he wrote a separate concurrence offering a looser interpretation, where protected wetlands were those that were part of a "significant nexus" with a navigable body of water.

[1] The minority opinion, by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, accused the plurality of threatening the environment, failure to defer to the executive branch, and judicial activism.

The EPA directed the Sacketts to halt construction until they received a permit from the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in August 2021, and rejected an attempt by the EPA to moot the litigation by withdrawing the compliance order.

[4] Amici curiae in support of the Sacketts were submitted by the Cato Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce, and Americans for Prosperity, while the Constitutional Accountability Center, Public Citizen, and major American scientific societies like the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, and Society of Wetland Scientists filed amici supporting the EPA.

The majority opinion, penned by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, concluded that the Rapanos plurality was correct, and that within the scope of the CWA, "the CWA's use of 'waters' 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'.

[8] Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed with the majority opinion that the CWA did not apply to the Sacketts' property, but argued that the majority's new definition was incorrect and will have significant effects on regulated waters.

[11] The EPA and Army Corps introduced their proposed final rule on wetlands, reflecting the opinion of the Supreme Court, in August 2023.