The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to set emissions standards for existing power plants, returning control to a divided Congress. The 6-3 judgment radically alters the federal government’s regulatory abilities in its fight against climate change.
The conservative-dominated bench ruled in the unusual case of West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency, which was based on the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The emissions-cutting strategy never came into effect, and the Biden administration tried to have the case dismissed. But West Virginia argued that “unelected bureaucrats” at the EPA should not be given the ability to restrict pollution and harm the coal-mining state’s economy.
“Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency of the power Congress gave it to respond to 'the most pressing environmental challenge of our time’,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissenting opinion.
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Republican lawmakers have long argued against the view that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the power to regulate emissions. The ruling on Thursday did not overturn an existing precedent, but rather established a new rule for future legal cases.
The move could have a profound impact on the Biden administration’s ability to achieve the ambitious carbon emission targets it has committed to as scientists and policymakers around the world have called for drastic and urgent action to avoid catastrophic climate change. The White House announced last April that the U.S. should achieve a 50-52 percent reduction in net greenhouse gas from 2005 levels by 2030. Reducing emissions from industrial sources—like power plants—were included in the strategy.
“When the Supreme Court took up the case of West Virginia v EPA, it was never simply concerned with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan from 2015 — a plan which was never implemented,” Lawrence O. Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, said in a statement after the ruling. “This move was part of the conservative Court’s larger agenda to gut the regulatory state and decimate executive powers to protect Americans’ health and safety. In a stark departure from its own precedent, the Court refused to defer to the EPA’s interpretation of its statutory authority, tying the agency’s hands in responding to what is likely the biggest threat of our generation, climate change.”
The latest ruling came after the court made the momentous decision to overturn Roe v Wade last week, destroying a half-century-old right to abortion access for millions of women across America. Speaking at a NATO summit in Madrid on Thursday, president Biden called the ruling “outrageous” and backed an exception to the filibuster in order to codify abortion rights in law.
