'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.”'
> 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." But it is not plausible that Congress gave the 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.
It seems pretty clear that Congress does have the authority to delegate, but that the Court ruled that Congress didn't intend to do so. This ruling places the ball firmly in Congress's court, it doesn't rule that Congress cannot act.
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.
> This case concerns whether the EPA can use its power to impose control technologies on power plants, to force the industry to use a particular mix of power generation sources (solar, gas, etc.).
Dissenting opinion quotes the following, which to me (and at least one supreme court judge) does not seem to limit this power:
> “the degree of emission limitation achievable through the application of the best system of emission reduction which (taking into account the cost of achieving such reduction and any nonair quality health and environmental impact and energy requirements) the [EPA] Administrator determines has been adequately demonstrated.” §7411(a)(1).
An attorney friend of mine summarized it by saying that the Supreme Court said it's OK for the EPA to dictate particular emission levels for power plants but not OK to require a plant to change it's method of power generation.
Yes, and the dissent spells that out clearly. An excerpt from the dissent:
> The majority says it is simply “not plausible” that Congress enabled EPA to regulate power plants’ emissions through generation shift- ing. Ante, at 31. But that is just what Congress did when it broadly authorized EPA in Section 111 to select the “best system of emission reduction” for power plants. §7411(a)(1). The “best system” full stop—no ifs, ands, or buts of any kind relevant here.
They were given broad power by congress explicitly. If congress had wanted them to reign in that power or not choose the best system, then they could pull it back at any time. They did not. The court decided that the previous congress was full of idiots and could not fathom future technologies for emission reduction and therefore is moot.
That is incorrect. Congress cannot broadly delegate authority to make rules with the force of law on the executive branch. Even liberals begrudgingly accept separation of powers.
Regulatory agencies exist based on the theory that Congress can leave it to agencies to "fill in the details" of a law as part of the executive discretion about how to enforce the law. In the Clean Air Act, Congress gave the EPA authority to pick toxic pollutants to regulate, and to specify the use of particular emissions control technologies like scrubbers.
What this case was about was whether this grant of authority could be fairly read to encompass telling entire industries what power generation mix they must use.
This is not like requiring the CEO to sign off on a minor bug fix. The reasoning of the Court is that industry-wide changes in power generation mix have sweeping effects on the country, and require specific authorization. Even huge companies routinely require executive approval for major new initiatives that will incur major costs to the company.
Congress did vote for EPA to have this power. The Supreme Court decided that they didn't like where that power led, and is now restricting the types of laws that Congress can make.
I'm not fluent in the decision yet, but at first glance:
It seems congress gave them limited power to regulate environmental protection via a law that was written. The EPA seems to have overstepped its legal boundaries in regulating. Instead of saying, "ah fuck it, let the machine run," the court is forcing congress to actually give it the additional power that it's been using, or to stop.
> 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.
> The court hasn't completely prevented the EPA from making these regulations in the future - but says that Congress would have to clearly say it authorises this power.
As someone that supports far harsher emissions regulations than were in effect even before this ruling, is it too much to ask that laws should be clear? As others have pointed out, there's no limit to the danger posed by letting the executive branch creatively interpret legislation.
And the court didn't rule that Congress can't do that, the court ruled that Congress didn't do that. Congress can absolutely go write a law giving the EPA that authority, and they should. But if that's not what the law says, then that's not what the EPA can do.
We can't be opposed to police creatively interpreting laws to target minorities and be okay with the EPA creatively interpreting laws to target fossil fuel companies. Just because the latter is in the service of a good cause doesn't make it legal. The ends do not justify the means--down that way lies peril.
> Doesn't requiring operators of coal plants to produce less electricity have the effect of reducing emissions from power plants a task that was given to the EPA.
Sure, along with other undesirable effects. But just as it is a mistake to decide what authority they have based on just their name, it would also be a mistake to do so based on just a one–sentence summary. We really should be quoting out of the enabling legislation.
Suffice to say that this legislation is long and complex, but it specifically gives the EPA the authority to mandate design improvements to new power plants (prior to construction) so that they will operate at the best possible efficiency, and also the authority to mandate the installation of new systems to reduce the pollution put out by both existing plants and new ones. This has historically been things like scrubbers to remove pollutants from the waste stream. Think of new hardware devices that you can add to a plant or a factory that reduce the pollution while maintaining their function.
The EPA tried to argue that they had devised a “system” under the meaning of the law that allowed them to shift power generation from coal to gas or renewable power. The Court pointed out that this would gut the word of all useful meaning, and that it would give the EPA the power to unilaterally decide the entire industrial policy of the country. They would be able to use the same language to simply ban almost anything they wanted, and it’s pretty clear that Congress never intended that. The EPA could use that new authority to reduce pollution by banning virtually all industrial activity, causing it all to be done in other countries, for example.
There is another interesting aspect of the enabling legislation. It requires the EPA to investigate multiple systems that achieve the goal of reducing some specific pollutant from some specific source (such as soot from a power plant or whatever), then to determine how much reduction the best of those systems would achieve. Then instead of mandating that everyone has to install that specific system, they are allowed to mandate that everyone must achieve the same reduction by some means. This gives the operators a chance to beat the EPA on either cost or performance, and avoids forced mistakes. If the EPA accidentally selects the second–best system rather than the best, nobody is forced to use a sub–par means of reducing the pollutant.
However, in the case of the EPA’s new generating–shifting “system”, everybody would be required to participate in the same way for it to work. The opinion states: “By contrast, and by design, there is no control a coal plant operator can deploy to attain the emissions limits established by the Clean Power Plan.”
Supreme Court simply ruled that EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers. Congress should give EPA more authority if its intends for the EPA to do more.
The issue we have is government agencies overreaching beyond their remit.
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.
This ruling has nothing to do with whether CO2 is a “pollutant.”
Congress cannot delegate a sector to an agency, because agencies are executive branch entities and the executive branch can’t make laws. Executive branch agencies operate under the fiction that they are merely enforcing laws Congress has created. That’s why Congress can’t delegate agencies the power to make rules with the force of law in an entire sector. It has to be more specific, so that the agency is simply “filling in the details.”
And the Clean Air Act is specific. It allows the EPA to fill in the details about pollutants and emissions levels. But it doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to do whatever is necessary to achieve those targets. It has a detailed menu of measures, such as requiring particular types of emissions control technology on individual plants.
In this case the EPA told the entire energy sector to switch away from coal to renewables. That wasn’t on the list of measures available under the Clean Air Act.
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 don't think that's at question in this case. It was decided in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA is required to make that determination itself. Three years after that decision, EPA basically answered "we think it is."
The court isn't bringing any of that up in this opinion. They are looking only at whether Congress specifically delegated EPA the power to regulate emissions by means of "generation shifting". The majority opinion was "no, they didn't."
The dissenting justices argue that congress already voted to give EPA the mandate to address air pollution. The majority opinion is that “climate change” is a different issue than “air pollution”.
For my part, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that CO2 emissions aren’t covered by the clean air act. And since the decision clearly follows the conservative agenda, it’s hard to not see it as a politically-driven decision.
Not really. The court's conclusion is that Congress didn't anticipate such significant consequences when they granted this authority, so the EPA has to wait for Congress to confirm they're ok with it. They're saying that yes the EPA has this power on paper, but "a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself", so surely they didn't actually mean to do that. Maybe they made a mistake, we have to ask again to be sure.
Maybe they did make a mistake, but if so they can fix it. I think what the court majority is saying here is patronizing and wrong. There's a perfectly normal process for Congress to amend a law if it accidentally gave up too much power.
'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.”'
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