Today, in a judgment on a plan that does not exist With unlikely harms to those who brought the case, the Supreme Court took the opportunity to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate the electricity sector’s carbon footprint.
In a summer of big decision from the Supreme Court of the United States, West Virginia Environmental Protection Agency sues is one of those odd cases on the charts. However, it involved a dispute that didn’t really exist. The complaint is about the Clean Power Plan, a set of rules issued by the EPA in 2015 that would push power plants to significantly cut carbon emissions by 2030. Only the plan was never implemented. presently. Fossil fuel executives and Republican officials spoke out about its potential economic impacts, going to court and quickly having regulations suspended. A year later, then-President Barack Obama gave Donald Trump the keys to the EPA, and the plan was a success.
So environmental advocates were shocked and concerned when the Supreme Court decided to put up a challenge to the plan already passed by the courts. Those fears are not unfounded. Writing for the conservative judicial majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the consequences of such a policy were too great for it to be enacted without clearer authorization from Congress.
That rationale doesn’t undermine the EPA as much as some environmental advocates have feared. The decision will still allow the agency to regulate emissions from power plants, albeit more narrowly than in the past. And the court did not take the opportunity to dispel the precedent that says agencies like the EPA can tackle carbon emissions on a large scale. But the decision is still a serious blow, highlighting the court’s skepticism about ambitious action from federal agencies and providing a potential roadmap for future legal challenges to the lawsuit. with climate policies. “They’re saying, ‘We’re loading guns today, but we’re not going to point it at anything,'” said Jay Austin, senior attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit legal group. other’, said Jay Austin, a senior attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit legal group.
“The Court appoints itself — rather than Congress or a specialized body — to make decisions on climate policy,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan in her dissent, which was joined by two self-made judges. due to other. “I couldn’t think of more scary things.”
The dispute, brought by a group of red state attorneys general, revolves around a section of the Clean Air Act that allows the agency to establish “best practices for emissions reductions” at power plants. Questions before the Court are one of the scopes. Perhaps by “best system” Congress means that the EPA can require technology to cut emissions at specific power plants, as it does for other pollutants. Or maybe it’s a broader mandate, enabling measures that could lead to shutting down a coal-fired power plant to generate cleaner energy somewhere else. With the Clean Power Plan, the EPA opted for a more sweeping interpretation.
But that disagreement hints at an even bigger legal question: What can government officials do with the often vague instructions Congress gives them? Traditionally, things will work out a certain way in Washington: Elected officials can’t predict every detail of every policy, nor do they want to. So it becomes the job of the people at the regulatory agencies who take the drafted laws and put them into action. Judges usually don’t like to get in the way. Under a doctrine known as “Chevron’s respect,” referring to the 1984 Supreme Court decision regarding the oil company, judges have repeatedly said that it is best to let scientists academics and policy experts do their jobs.
