No. No. Wrong. The Supreme Court's mandate is to be the Supreme Court, not to be the solve-the-current-crisis fixer. I want the planet not to fry and to still have a constitutional democracy at the end of that process.
The problem is that people want to handle this "on the cheap", by executive order, rather than by the actual existing mechanism, which is through Congress. Yes, Congress created the EPA. They didn't give them the authority to regulate CO2, though. That was an overreach when the executive order came out, and that reality finally caught up legally.
You want to regulate CO2? Then do it the right way - by having Congress pass a bill that grants that power to the EPA. That's the difference between rule of law and rule of the president.
You say those states have too much power? No they don't. There's only 18 of them. That's only 36 senators. They don't have a majority of the House, either. So go do it the way it should have been done from the beginning, instead of trying to get away with using a lazy back door.
[Edit: Reading other posts here, the issue may not have been CO2 emission, but rather management of the electrical grid. I still think that CO2 was a massive over-reach when the EPA started regulating that. It was almost certainly beyond the scope that Congress conceived of when they created the EPA.]
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.
The fact that nobody was harmed by this regulation -- and there was no urgency -- and yet the Court still took the case is indeed a huge problem that underlines my concerns with this case. Why did the Court step into this case and override both Congress and the executive branch when the regulation itself wasn't harming the plaintiffs? The emergency here is that the EPA now has no idea what its authority will be on any regulatory actions regarding CO2. (And when Congress finally legislates, it won't know what its authority is either.)
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.
> 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.
You're looking at it completely backwards. Congress was fine to let the EPA run around and do whatever, because that means people can bitch at the EPA instead of Congress.
> Why is it the court's job to tell congress what they meant to say?
That's... not what they're doing. The court is telling Congress that if you want an agency to have the power to make vast, sweeping changes, then you have to be explicit. They don't get to create an agency and then just give them blanket authority to do anything they want, at any scale.
'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.”'
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.
Carbon dioxide was not considered a pollutant when the law was passed, so congress should specifically authorize such a significant expansion of the EPA authority. Rule by executive fiat is never wise, and if the case were clear cut on this matter, it would not be so hard to get congress to act. There isn't and never was democratic consensus on this topic, and people who support it need to convince people who do not before it can become public policy.
Read the dissent and see if you don't find it equally convincing. Supreme Court justices are very smart and very good at their jobs and it's not surprising that pretty much everything they write sounds reasonable and well-argued.
Key quote from the dissent:
> Section 111 of the Clean Air Act directs EPA to regulate stationary sources of any substance that “causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution”
and that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
So, does CO2 qualify, or is it a "major new problem"? Sounds like a policy issue to me.
> On the other hand, if you read liberal dissents, they’re mostly about what they think appropriate policy should be.
The Supreme Court is not supposed to set policy. It's only supposed to rule on if the policy set by others (Congress) is constitutional or not.
If the EPA could do anthing to stop emmisions, banning power plants from existing at all would satisfy "do anything to stop emmisions", so would "depopulating the planet" (no people, no need for power plants). Those seems like they make it pretty clear they need specific limits. They were given specific limits. The court confirmed that.
Congress needs to increase what they're allowed to regulate and how if they want more power. It's frustrating that that's so hard to come by but it's hard to imagine how else it could be
While I dislike poorly written laws (including those that work around some failing of our current "state" of government) and judges lacking accountability - this seems to be in the same league as the EPA Regulator Case[0] that's sitting at the Supreme Court right now.
The end-goal doesn't appear to be justice for the aggrieved party but more so the elimination of agency-issued oversight. The jurisprudence seems to follow the idea that if the legislator didn't explicitly grant or disallow an agency to do something or regulate something then that agency has absolutely no power at all to do it.
On a basic level this seems to make sense but the practical application of this would mean that legislators would need to explicitly pass legislation anytime a regulatory body needs to address a specific issue or regulate some behavior (that presumably they already had the authority to regulate by the very nature of the agency being created).
This _may_ be a regular case that naturally found its way into the legal system - but the 5th circuit has the history that it does and the targets of these lawsuits (SEC, EPA, etc) typically have deep-pocketed foes.
The clean air act clearly gives the EPA power to regulate emissions of pollutants that are a threat to welfare. It's not really arguable that that coal power plants fall into that or that greenhouse gases are pollutants that are a threat to welfare. This is a ridiculous decision that flies in the face of the law, and their justification that somehow this is too much and that Congress needed to specify that they had explicit authority over power plants because that is "too significant" is patently ridiculous. Congress gave them a mandate over pollutants, I don't see how that is possibly an overreach. The position that Congress can't put an agency in power of regulating emissions because that's too general is ridiculous.
You are oversimplifying. Generally speaking, most of the work of SCOTUS is reigning in the Executive because of overzealous regulators. The US regulatory framework is theoretically designed to be based in law, made by the legislature, not the whims of unelected bureaucracy.
Congress delegating it’s power is suspect at best, and likely unconstitutional entirely (something something, War Powers Act). Congress created the EPA through the power of the purse, but it’s operated by the Executive, and therefore is not and should not be empowered to unilaterally create regulations with the force of law. Making law is Congress’ job.
> 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.
Legally, it's a very flimsy basis on which to attack the current structure and operation of the country. It is simply untrue that Congress is not allowed to delegate its powers, and where to draw the line has always been a subjective judgment that different courts have drawn differently. https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html
And frankly, I think the anti-administrative state people are on the payroll of polluters who want the regulators to be politicians who are more dependent on big business for funds.
Congress should be allowed to leave things to the experts if it wants to. After all, it is free to change the scope of regulatory agencies at any time.
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.
Congress delegated their authority to the EPA. Congress is empowered to retain that authority and they're empowered to overrule any EPA regulation they disagree with. Congress retains all the power.
When it comes to the Supreme Court - that's it. Congress can't do anything about Supreme Court rulings. Your comparison of the EPA to the Supreme Court is misguided.
The problem is that people want to handle this "on the cheap", by executive order, rather than by the actual existing mechanism, which is through Congress. Yes, Congress created the EPA. They didn't give them the authority to regulate CO2, though. That was an overreach when the executive order came out, and that reality finally caught up legally.
You want to regulate CO2? Then do it the right way - by having Congress pass a bill that grants that power to the EPA. That's the difference between rule of law and rule of the president.
You say those states have too much power? No they don't. There's only 18 of them. That's only 36 senators. They don't have a majority of the House, either. So go do it the way it should have been done from the beginning, instead of trying to get away with using a lazy back door.
[Edit: Reading other posts here, the issue may not have been CO2 emission, but rather management of the electrical grid. I still think that CO2 was a massive over-reach when the EPA started regulating that. It was almost certainly beyond the scope that Congress conceived of when they created the EPA.]
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