Chantell and Michael Sackett’s case against the Environmental Protection Agency before the Supreme Court on Monday might appear to be David versus Goliath. But those supporting the Sacketts with friend-of-the-court briefs are corporate Goliaths like General Electric and real estate developers eager to weaken the E.P.A.’s ability to protect wetlands and waterways under the federal Clean Water Act.

The Sacketts owned a small lot about 500 feet from Idaho’s pristine Priest Lake. They filled part of it with dirt and rock in preparing to build a house. The E.P.A. determined that the lot is federally protected wetland so the Sacketts needed a permit to do the work, which they did not seek. The agency ordered the couple to remove the fill because pollutants were being discharged.

The E.P.A. can issue compliance orders directing violators to get a permit and remedy any damage they caused. But to enforce an order, the agency has to sue in federal court; it does not have power to take action against a violator on its own. The Sacketts in their brief say they had no reason to believe their lot was covered by the Clean Water Act, though there is evidence to the contrary. They argue that lack of judicial review of the compliance order violated their due process rights, though they could have challenged the order through the agency’s administrative process — and could have gotten a permit after the E.P.A. told them they needed one.

Almost every federal court that has considered the issue found that the law does not allow “judicial review of compliance orders until the E.P.A. brings an enforcement action,” as the Ninth Circuit appeals court said in ruling against the Sacketts. The court explained that this process allows the agency “to act to address environmental problems quickly and without becoming immediately entangled in litigation.” Allowing challenges to E.P.A. orders before they are enforced would give landowners the ability to delay in correcting the harm they caused. Compliance orders are useful because they allow the agency to press landowners to negotiate about mitigating harms.