This year, the US Supreme Court rejected an interstate water rights settlement on the Rio Grande, in Texas v New Mexico, due to the Federal Government’s objection. The decision may suggest an expanded role for the Federal Government in the interpretation and enforcement of interstate water compacts. The proposed Consent Decree would have resolved ten years of interstate litigation among the compacting states over whether New Mexico had violated the Rio Grande Compact. The US argued that approval of the Consent Decree would bar it from pursuing its own breach of compact claims against New Mexico. The 5-4 majority sustained the US objection, rejecting the dissent’s assertion that the majority’s opinion constituted “a serious assault on the power of States to govern, as they always have, the water rights of users in their jurisdictions.”