This is a silly decision. I don't respect the reasoning at all.
If Republicans want to abolish the EPA, all they have to do is pass a law. They could do it with a simple majority in each House if they abolish the filibuster (which itself requires only a simple majority).
There is no meaningful loss of democratic control here. Congress can do whatever it wants, with or without the EPA.
This is just the highest court in the land acting as toadies for the fossil fuel industry, legislating from the bench on a flimsy right wing legal theory.
Do y'all not consider how the EPA came into being in the first place? It exists because a previous congress did do something and delegated their authority for a very specific reason. Like it was a joint effort between Republicans and Democrats even.
What this Supreme Court has decided to do is say that what they did doesn't matter, knowing that the current makeup in congress is in gridlock due to how modern day Republicans behave. Like the dissent was posted here. Congress explicitly empowered the EPA to work towards the best system of emission reduction.
This decision seems largely irrelevant to me, because the Democrats with their majority and White House could pass new legislation next week to authorize the EPA to do what it needs to do.
This is nonsense. Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA, which means that voters have the power to elect representatives to do just that if the EPA made a bad ruling.
And in this particular case, this isn't even remotely a bad ruling. The inability for markets to properly price in their negative externalities is the reason for our current looming crisis, and making up for the failures of markets by properly imposing those externalities is one of the most important roles of government.
Just because it is called the EPA, doesn't mean it is invested with all power to do whatever it thinks is right regarding the environment. Congress delegated some powers that were environment related.
If it is important for the EPA to act on these matters, then call your Congress critters and have them pass a law granting more power to the EPA.
This ruling is a win for democracy and the rule of law.
Relying on novel interpretations of law like this is fragile, and short sighted. It's worth it to get everyone on board instead of trying to pull a fast one. In a democracy, getting everyone on board means getting laws passed.
Huh? The Congress that created the EPA granted that authority, which is why the EPA has had the court's full support for decades. It took an extremely partisan SCOTUS to invent an excuse to say the opposite.
Well the fix here is for Congress to pass a specific law empowering the EPA with explicit authority.
If something like that can't make it through congress then it isn't democratic, and the task then becomes one of convincing the other side. I've the had the anti-coal conversation with plenty of conservatives and they were all open to my point of view.
Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy, even if it is a (temporary) step back for fighting climate change.
> a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.
Honestly it's hard to see how that position is unreasonable. If Congress wants the EPA to have this power, let them vote to give it. If Congress does not want the EPA to have this power, then the EPA shouldn't attempt to exercise power they don't have. There's really no other solution if we're going to have a representative government.
That is silly hyperbolic overreaction. The court literally upheld the EPA regulating greenhouse gasses at the point of creation. It upheld the specific regulations how coal was burned. All it said was the EPA wasn't empowered to move into grid management schemes. If congress wants to grant them that power, it can.
Does this lead to a constitutional crisis over the EPA's ability to govern? It seems like the Feds have a difficult time using interstate commerce as a justification for the EPA's authority. In this case, California isn't attempting to regulate industry outside of the state (it just happens to be so powerful as to have that side-effect).
I feel like this is a move to destroy the EPA and make California pay the legal fees to do it.
This decision simply told the EPA that it needs specific authorization to engage in a sweeping restructuring of the country’s power generation mix to address climate change, and can’t rely on its existing authority to tell coal plants to install particulate scrubbers.
This is a huge problem warranting an apoplectic reaction because everyone knows Congress won’t do that. In fact, voters are about to hand Congress back over to the GOP because they’re mad about paying $5/gallon for gas. The vast majority of Americans want to address climate change, but won’t pay even $10/month extra on their electric bill to do so: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-.... Having Congress vote to raise everyone’s energy costs is a total non-starter.
The unstated subtext to all this is that, to address climate change, we need to bypass democracy and impose sweeping changes through unelected bureaucrats and boring administrative proceedings nobody pays attention to. And it’s quite revealing who thinks that’s a good idea and who thinks it’s a bad idea.
Congress already has the option of overriding/veto any EPA adopted regulation. It has never used that power to remove regulation of CO2. This is not a win for democracy -- quite the opposite.
The headlines aren’t entirely wrong. If you look at the conservative majority opinions, you’ll find that indeed, it’s about the relevant legal issues, ie. what the law actually says. On the other hand, if you read liberal dissents, they’re mostly about what they think appropriate policy should be.
In this particular case, the majority opinion starts off by quoting the relevant statute and analyzing its meaning, whereas the dissent starts off by saying (quoting) that “climate change is the most pressing environmental challenge of our time”, and continues with a long litany of how bad it is.
Really, I find the entire thing to be rather crazy: if the Congress wants EPA to regulate emissions the way they tried to do, all it needs to do is to pass a law explicitly instructing it to do so. Of course, it won’t, because there is no political will in Congress to pass this. At the same time, the EPA’s argument in this case was that the Congress has already delegated this to EPA. Considering that the Congress won’t pass a law confirming that yes, it did in fact delegate authority to execute these particular regulations (which, again, would render the entire SCOTUS decision irrelevant), I find the EPA’s argument of rather dubious quality.
So to recap: the SCOTUS has ruled that the agency established and authorized by Congress to regulate environmental protection does not have the authority to regulate environmental protection.
I agree and its frustrating to see this crowd continually push the point that congress needs to grant explicit powers to the EPA when they already know that every single Republican politician is against moving the needle on climate change. This case was filed by 19 Republican lead states which constitute 44% of emissions in the US and is a multiyear effort by conservative climate change deniers[1] Any significant law will simply not pass the senate because the only thing senate Republicans are apparently good at is blocking progress. So this double play on the part of right leaning commentators is really in bad faith.
'WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, in a decision that could limit the authority of government agencies to address major policy questions without congressional approval.
Elaborating on earlier decisions, the high court said federal agencies need explicit authorization from Congress to decide issues of major economic and political significance, drawing on a principle known as the “major questions doctrine.”
In his decision for the 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Congress never gave the EPA the authority to change the methods a power plant uses—regulations known as “generation shifting” requirements.
Chief Justice Roberts said that forcing a nationwide transition away from coal may be a “sensible” idea, but the EPA cannot do so without a clear authority from Congress.
“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 chief justice wrote, adding that the “EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute.”'
As mentioned in the dissent, congress explicitly gave them the power to regulate green house gasses in this specific scenario. But the majority conservative opinion made up their own rationale as to why that somehow doesn't apply in order to curb the EPAs power.
The modern day supreme court is a joke, unable to be even remotely consistent in how it applies its rationale and its clear they're merely another puppet for conservative politics.
Agreed. This isn't about climate change, it's about proper procedure as the Constitution sets it up. The EPA went past its mandated purposes as set up by law. Congress needs to pass a new law to give it this power. If it can't, that's their problem. This was a good decision as far too much power has been given to the administrative state to basically make up laws.
If Republicans want to abolish the EPA, all they have to do is pass a law. They could do it with a simple majority in each House if they abolish the filibuster (which itself requires only a simple majority).
There is no meaningful loss of democratic control here. Congress can do whatever it wants, with or without the EPA.
This is just the highest court in the land acting as toadies for the fossil fuel industry, legislating from the bench on a flimsy right wing legal theory.
reply