The Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the Biden administration’s climate change agenda, ruling Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot pass sweeping regulations that could overhaul entire industries without additional congressional approval.
The 6-3 decision limits how far the executive branch can go in forcing new environmental regulations on its own. [bold, links added]
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” Chief Justice John Roberts said in the Court’s opinion.
“But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d). A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”
The case stemmed from the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan which aimed to reduce carbon emissions at power plants.
The plan was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2016, and then repealed by the Trump administration and replaced by the less extreme Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule.
After President Biden took office, the ACE Rule became the subject of litigation that led to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacating that rule as well as the repeal of the Clean Power Plan.
The Biden EPA, however, has stated that it will not reinstate the Clean Power Plan, opting instead to develop and implement its own plan.
The question of how much power the EPA has was based on a provision in Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which grants the EPA power to set “standards of performance” for existing sources of air pollutants as long as they take into account cost, energy requirements, and non-air health and environmental impacts.
The Trump EPA, in repealing the Clean Power Plan, took the position that Section 111 only let them determine measures to be implemented at the physical power plants themselves (an “inside-the-fence-line” restriction) and not broadly-applied measures for entire industries.
Similarly, West Virginia and other states claimed that Section 111 does not allow the EPA to go so far as to make rules that would completely reshape American electrical grids or force industries to eliminate carbon emissions altogether.
West Virginia’s argument is based on the “major questions doctrine,” which says that even though federal agencies generally have broad rulemaking power as delegated by Congress through the statutes that create them when it comes to issues of major economic and political significance to the country, those statutes need to have clear language to support the agency’s action.
Without clear language, they would need new legislation that specifically grants them the power to carry out their actions.
The Biden EPA claimed that the major questions doctrine did not apply in this case, arguing that there was no issue of such great significance.
During oral arguments, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asserted that there cannot be a major question because there is no current rule in place.
Additionally, the administration argued that there is no major question because the U.S. ended up meeting the Obama administration’s carbon goals even without the Clean Power Plan in place. [Thanks largely to our switch to natural gas and more fracking. —CCD ed.]
Developing…
Read more at Fox News
Great win for liberty and freedom! The left has used the administrative state i.e. the bureaucracy to employ regulations instead of specific legislation–always unleashing a blizzard rules and regs with the force of laws!!!!!!!!!! The EPA’s broad brush approach has been stopped!!
A half century of brazen leftist activism is being reined in by supreme court
This is just the first step and I hope the SCOTUS continues. They need to get rid of the ability of agencies to adjudicate their rulings (talk about having a need for recusal since there is by definition conflict of interest!) These agencies are not only acting as the administrator of rules but also the legislature in creating them and then the judiciary to adjudicate those who they say violated those rules.
OK, so IF we are in a “climate crisis” and in such dire need of more foundational environmental laws, then GET BUSY in Congress! That would necessitate debate about climate and you’d have to SELL IDEAS to get enough votes to pass the “transformational” laws you claim to need to save the planet rather than hiding behind administrative agencies & using the courts to enforce your ideological agenda. Folks that are well informed & of good will would WELCOME an HONEST debate! Therein lies the problem…
You can already hear the whining from Greenpeace you can already picture them running around dressed as Polar Bears and pulling a Drowning Polar Bear Act
The article assumes that Congress has the authority to regulate power plants. That is not true. All such authority including the very existence of the EPA is base on the Constitution’s clause on interstate commerce being a federal power. “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” This was primarily to prevent states from imposing import taxes on each other. This has been used to justify a massive expansion of federal power starting with FDR, but a valid interpretation finds the EPA, ATF and other agencies out of scope.
Today the federal government operates on the principle if it isn’t forbidden by the Constitution, then it is allowed. The Constitution’s list of enumerated powers proves otherwise. If the federal government had the authority to do anything not forbidden, then why does it need a list of powers such as collecting taxes or establishing the post office? It needs this list because any power not granted by the Constitution is forbidden. That certainly includes the EPA and all of its rulings.
If climate change were a legitimate problem, then action would be up to the states. The climateers would complain that only half the states would take action. That is because the “climate crisis” has always been assumed, but never proven. The states willing to take action are the liberal states that are attracted by the multiple liberal agendas hitchhiking on the climate change movement, such as an excuse for new taxes.