The Supreme Court’s conservative majority dealt another major blow to the EPA’s authority on Thursday, siding with the state of Ohio in its case against the EPA. The court ruled that the EPA unconstitutionally enforced the Clean Air Act’s “Good Neighbor” plan, which essentially was created to prevent air pollutants from up-wind states from flowing into down-wind states. The case was brought after the EPA changed its air policy standards on ozone emissions in 2015. Twenty of the 23 state-level plans became non-compliant, and the EPA moved to reject them. The court rejected the EPA’s authority to reject these state-level plans, with Gorsuch writing the majority opinion. Essentially, Gorsuch argued that the EPA cannot invalidate the state-level plans because the states bear the “primary responsibility” and thus the EPA has “no authority to question the wisdom of a State’s choices of emission limitations.” Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas and Roberts joined Gorsuch in their concurrent opinion with Barrett writing the dissent alongside Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson. Barrett slammed the court for not considering whether the disapprovals of state-level plans may be valid as the states proposed to “do nothing” to reduce emissions in the resubmissions.
