Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. NRDC
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 4, 2012 Decided January 8, 2013
Full case name	Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. National Resources Defense Council, et al.
Docket no.	11-460
Citations	568 U.S. 78 (more) 133 S. Ct. 710; 184 L. Ed. 2d 547; 2013 U.S. LEXIS 597; 75 ERC 1641; 81 U.S.L.W. 4031
Case history
Prior	673 F.3d 880, 886 (9th Cir. 2011) rehearing denied; 636 F.3d 1235 (9th Cir. 2011); cert. granted, 567 U.S. 933 (2012).
Subsequent	Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc. v. Cty. of L.A., 725 F.3d 1194 (9th Cir. 2013); cert. denied, 572 U.S. 1100 (2014); on remand, No. 2:08-cv-01467 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 30, 2015); reversed, 840 F.3d 1098 (9th Cir. 2016).
Holding
The flow of water from an improved portion of a navigable waterway into an unimproved portion of the same waterway does not qualify as a "discharge of a pollutant" under the Clean Water Act
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Ginsburg, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
Concurrence	Alito (in judgment)
Laws applied
U.S. Const. art. III; Clean Water Act

Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 568 U.S. 78 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Natural Resources Defense Council and Santa Monica Baykeeper challenged the Los Angeles County Flood Control District (District) for violating the terms of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit as shown in water quality measurements from monitoring stations within the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers.^[1][2] The Supreme Court, by a unanimous 9-0 vote, reversed and remanded the Ninth Circuit's ruling on the grounds that the flow of water from an improved portion of a navigable waterway into an unimproved portion of the same waterway does not qualify as a "discharge of a pollutant" under the Clean Water Act.