US Supreme Court Rejects Texas and New Mexico Deal on Rio Grande Water

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied a motion from Texas and New Mexico to enter a settlement over water rights to the Rio Grande river. The U.S. high court, in a 5–4 decision, ruled that a lower court judge erred in his recommendations on how Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado should share water from the 1,900-mile-long river. The high court found that the federal government still had claims about New Mexico’s water use that the settlement would not resolve, and federal government attorneys lodged objections to the agreement. In an opinion for the majority, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the federal government has the right to be part of the agreement under a 1939 agreement on how to share the river’s resources....