The US Supreme Court rejected unanimously (with one abstention) a motion brought by the State of Texas for the Supreme Court to be the original court of record on a lawsuit it filed between states.  This case, however, wasn’t about election votes; it was about water, a valuable commodity in the arid Southwest.

The case revolves around the resolution of a dispute Texas has with its neighbor, New Mexico, over water storage after a 2014 tropical storm dumped rain on the Pecos River Valley.  Texas reached an agreement with New Mexico to store the water to prevent flooding, and the compact provided that New Mexico would return the water to Texas upon request.

A year later, as Texas faced massive droughts, it requested New Mexico release the water backing into the river’s ecosystem.  Texas then complained that New Mexico withheld some of the water it had diverted the year before; New Mexico provided scientific data that the water had evaporated. 

The River Master, a person selected by both New Mexico and Texas government authorities, was named to oversee the provisions of the compact.  The Master found in favor of New Mexico in that New Mexico was not responsible for returning evaporated water to Texas.

Texas attempted to take its dispute directly to the Supreme Court in an effort to overrule the River Master, but SCOTUS ruled 8-0, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett abstaining, to reject the motion, the second time in four days SCOTUS has rejected Texas’s claim that SCOTUS has original jurisdiction.

The issue of water supply among states is becoming a contentious one, as climate change and population shifts have strained water supplies.  States claim that they are entitled to retain water supplies, which can in turn harm downstream ecosystems and economies across state borders.

Just last week, NASDAQ started to treat water from a California watershed as a commodity on its markets in a sign of its importantance.