What happens when a family’s landlocked agriculture property is deemed a wetland and the feds disregard a historic Supreme Court ruling? U.S. landowners and farmers move two steps forward and three steps back.
In May 2025, the Army Corps of Engineers tagged 1.13 acres belonging to Caleb and Rebecca Linck of Bonner County, Idaho, as a wetland, essentially dropping Clean Water Act (CWA) authority over their entire property. Significantly, the Linck’s ground is hundreds of feet from the nearest stream and 2 miles from the nearest lake. Close enough, according to federal officials.
Astoundingly, the Lincks live in the precise county where another family won a landmark CWA Supreme Court ruling in 2023, Sackett v. EPA, essentially protecting landowners from agency overregulation.
The Lincks, represented by Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), are preparing for a legal fight. “It’s an outrage,” says PLF attorney Charles Yates. “After Sackett, the agencies went back to the drawing board. They simply won’t accept that the highest court in the land definitively told them they could not keep doing what they were doing. And it’s happening again in other cases, right now, to people all over the country.”
“This is part of a deliberate strategy on the part of these agencies to continue regulating as if Sackett didn’t happen,” Yates adds.
Even when government shrinks, it expands. Welcome to the Linck’s alarming case.
Leapfrog
In the northernmost reaches of Idaho, Caleb and Rebecca Linck own a 4.7-acre parcel inherited from family. Their hope? Live on the land and turn the spot to agriculture production in the future.
Prior to any disturbance or broken ground, the couple hired a wetlands consultant to ensure CWA adherence. The move backfired. On May 14, 2025, the Corps claimed authority over 1.13 acres of their ground—a purported federal wetland. Two months later, the Lincks, represented by PLF, filed an appeal.
The Linck’s acre of “wetlands” is hundreds of feet away from the nearest water—a stream. Their acre, zoned agriculture, is bordered by an elevated 35’-wide gravel road with no culverts. There are no land features within the acre that qualify for agency regulation. How is the Linck’s dry ground a wetland, according to the Corps?
(When contacted by Agweb.com regarding the Linck case, Corps representatives declined comment.)
A leapfrog association, claims the agency. Across the road from the Linck’s property is a farm pasture containing a swale depression. The pasture touches a stream that connects to a creek that spills into a navigable waterway. Thereby, the Linck acre is a connect-the-dots wetland in the eyes of government.
“The Corps uses what they call a ‘wetlands complex theory,’” describes Yates. “They’re aggregating a whole bunch of wetlands in one area, and calling them one giant wetland, even if they’re separated by roads or berms or other structures.”
Subsurface connections. Groundwater hydrology. All water flows downhill. Catchall.
“By the Corps’ logic, because one little bit of the wetlands complex touches or abuts a covered water, then the whole thing can be regulated,” Yates continues. “That’s illegal for obvious reasons and it flatly violates the Sackett test.”
The Sackett case, arguably a mirror of the Linck case, still shocks many Americans.
Dozens of Cases
In Bonner County—the exact locale of the Linck’s property—the Sackett family attempted to build a subdivision home roughly a third- to half-mile distant from Priest Lake. Several previously constructed homes (and a road) stood between the Sackett property and the lake.
EPA designated the Sackett lot a wetland and issued a cease-and-desist construction order, threatening the couple with fines upward of $40,000 per day. Represented by PLF, the Sacketts fought back in court.
In May 2023, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) issued a seismic 9-0 decision in favor of the Sacketts. In a major rebuke to EPA and the Corps, SCOTUS noted that wetlands designations should be obvious to the public, i.e., common sense should be in play. In a nutshell, SCOTUS said CWA regulations only apply to wetlands with a continuous surface water connection to navigable waters.
Justice Samuel Alito was specific: “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.”
Following the 2023 SCOTUS ruling, have regulatory agencies operated by the newly minted CWA enforcement restrictions?
Ask Iowa landowner Dan Ward. “No. They broke it immediately,” Ward said in 2024. “They ignored it and carried on, right on my property.”
Ward was blocked by the Corps from building a pond on his 420-acre farm property because agency officials considered a dry depression that runs half-a-mile across his land, over 100 miles from the nearest navigable river, to be “waters of the United States.”
How many nationwide CWA cases are ongoing related to jurisdictional determinations, enforcement actions, compliance orders, or negotiations where regulatory agencies are pressing authority beyond Sackett?
“Widespread,” Yates emphasizes. “This is not just happening in Idaho or California. This is in North Carolina. This is in Iowa. This is in every corner of the country and I’m speaking about dozens of cases that I’m personally aware of.”
No Accident, No Oversight
Wash, rinse, repeat, contends Yates, who was a member of the PLF litigation team that argued the Sackett case at the Supreme Court. “The Lincks are falling victim to the exact same agency actions taken against the Sacketts. After the Sackett decision, the agencies wouldn’t accept that the highest court in the land definitively told them they could not keep doing what they were doing. Now it’s back to business as usual to assert authority to the maximum extent possible.”
The Linck’s landlocked farm property—is not so landlocked, per agency assertion.
“The Linck case is an egregious example of an agency blatantly disregarding the Supreme Court,” Yates concludes. “This is not an accident. This is not bureaucratic oversight. This is, I believe, part of a deliberate strategy on the part of these agencies to continue regulating as if Sackett didn’t happen. These agencies are holding tight to power.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Outraged Farmers Blame Ag Monopolies as Catastrophic Collapse Looms
Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business
County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
