The U.S. Supreme Court case United States of America v. State of Louisiana, et al., also known as the Alabama and Mississippi Boundary Case in 1990, revolved around a dispute over offshore boundaries between federal and state jurisdictions for submerged lands along the Gulf Coast. The controversy arose from differing interpretations of the Submerged Lands Act (SLA) which grants coastal states title to natural resources located within three geographical miles from their coastlines but did not clearly define how to measure this distance. The court ruled that for purposes of determining each state's coastline under SLA, all low-tide elevations situated within three geographic miles seaward from any other part of its coastline must be included even if they are not closely linked to its land mass or do not contribute significantly to enclosing an area with inland waters. This decision clarified how these boundaries should be determined and resolved disputes among several states regarding ownership rights over valuable oil reserves found beneath these contested areas.

In the dissenting opinion for the United States of America v. State of Louisiana, et al., case in 1990, it was argued that the majority's decision to apply a rule from international law (equidistance principle) to determine state boundaries within domestic U.S. waters was inappropriate and inconsistent with prior Supreme Court decisions on similar matters. The dissenting justices believed that this approach disregarded historical context and traditional practices regarding boundary demarcation between states along shared bodies of water. They also expressed concern about potential implications for other coastal states' rights over their submerged lands and natural resources therein if such an internationally derived principle were applied domestically without due consideration for unique American contexts or established legal precedents at home.