Another huge ruling due anytime. My VERY limited understanding is that it could totally gut the EPA (and any other number of federal agencies). I know it’s a pet project of Gorsuch’s. After last week it would not surprise me if the other Justices joined.

Monumental change in a single term. I never thought I’d see anything like it in my lifetime, and it’s just getting started.

Put another way, this is what winning actually looks like. And we have Trump, McConnell, and even RBG to thank for it.

I'll be watching this one.

Would be wonderful if the wheels were removed from the regulatory state bandwagon. Hopefully this decision will go that way, and start a trend.

There was a reason the Constitution made lawmaking hard. And it wasn't to put rule-setting and enforcing in the hands of bureacrats.

What Joel said...

Wasnt aware of this thanks for sharing. It would be great to restrict the executive branch's ability to implement their retarded anti-American agenda via regulations every time there is a D residing in the white house...

Yup, best pride month ever.

And still West Virginia v EPA still to come. This ruling, even though a little under the radar, could be as monumental as the Roe decision. Praying this one is another win.

That one is not on my radar. Cliff notes?

ETA: Never mind--I just read a brief. I can understand the EPA regulating some gaseous emissions, but CO2 (called one of the "greenhouse gases") is not a pollutant since it is the main food of green plants. Noxious gases should probably be regulated (like SO2, NH3, H2S, NO2, etc.) but not CO2 (which is what the environazis really want stopped).

flashguy

One more blockbuster Supreme Court decision could still be coming even after Friday's abortion ruling
Supreme Court's abortion ruling rocked nation last week but West Virginia v. EPA could also be huge

Believe it or not, overturning Roe v. Wade may not be the Supreme Court’s most dramatic decision this year. Instead, its ruling on West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency could prove far more consequential. It could literally upend how our government works.

For the better.

West Virginia vs. the EPA asks whether important policies that impact the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected D.C. bureaucrats or by Congress. This SCOTUS could well decide that ruling by executive agency fiat is no longer acceptable.

The case involves the Clean Power Plan, which was adopted under President Barack Obama to fight climate change; the program was estimated to cost as much as $33 billion per year and would have completely reordered our nation’s power grid. The state of West Virginia, joined by two coal companies and others, sued the EPA, arguing the plan was an abuse of power.

By deciding in favor of West Virginia, the court could begin to rein in the vast powers of the alphabet agencies in D.C. that run our lives and return it to legislators whom we elect to create…legislation. Just as the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that abortion laws are more appropriately left up to the people’s elected representatives, it may decide in West Virginia vs. EPA that Congress, and not federal agencies, should write our laws.

A decision that puts Congress in charge would stall environmental rules intended to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. Legislators, back in the driver’s seat, would have to debate and go public with the consequences – and costs -- of regulations that are now adopted with little buy-in from the public.

To further their climate agenda, Democrats have been able to hide the full-in price tag of abandoning oil and gas as our main energy sources by creating tax subsidies for renewables. If consumers had to pay the real cost of wind and solar power, they might not be so enthusiastic about what President Joe Biden calls the great "transition."

But the case goes beyond environmental regulations.

A ruling in favor of West Virginia would reverse a decades-long trend in which Congress has handed off to federal agencies decisions our legislators refuse or are unable to make. The usurping of authority by D.C. bureaucracies began with the New Deal in the 1930s, when an ambitious President Franklin D. Roosevelt led the way by creating the TVA, the WPA and a total of 69 other offices and executive branch agencies to do his bidding. The process occasioned Democrat Al Smith to complain that he was "submerged in a bowl of alphabet soup."

Restricting the power of the alphabet soup authorities might require that our representatives and senators actually do their jobs, allowing less time for posturing and passing pointless dead-on-arrival bills. They might have to show up more than half the days in the year, for instance, which is the current norm.

It could, for sure, derail the ambitions of Joe Biden, who won no significant majority in Congress and appears incapable of "working across the aisle," though as Candidate Biden, he argued that ability was one of his strongest credentials.

In addition to broad environmental rules that might come under new scrutiny, subsequent suits might challenge labor laws written by the NLRB, consumer protection edicts from the CFPB, and regulations put in place by the FDA, the CDC and the entire host of agencies that have immense – many would say excess – power over our lives.

But initially, the ruling would deep-six the Biden administration’s ambition to kill off the coal industry, which is why West Virginia, our nation’s second biggest coal-mining state after Wyoming, brought the suit, along with Westmoreland Mining Holdings, North American Coal Corporation and others.

Like Obama, Biden wants to effectively shut down our fossil fuel industries that provide cheap, plentiful and reliable energy and that are the envy of the world. His "Build Back Better" plan incorporated $550 billion in programs aimed at curtailing emissions, including significant portions of Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal.

Obama’s approach was to reinterpret the 1970 Clean Air Act to allow a nationwide cap-and-trade regimen, requiring power plants to offset emissions by investing in other low-carbon facilities. Congress did not alter the Clean Air Act language to permit the Clean Power Plan; the Obama White House simply grabbed it as a way to further their climate ambitions.

The courts decided the CPP constituted executive overreach and put the plan on hold. Subsequently, the Trump White House rescinded the program.

This back-and-forth highlights an obvious problem with government by alphabet soup. Successive administrations can easily change the rules by which such agencies operate. Policymaking ; therefore, is erratic and inconsistent. Especially in the power arena, where new facilities can take years to build and the impact on the general population can be profound, this is a costly and inefficient way to govern.

Political parties rise and fall, to be sure, and can also change the nation’s direction. But matters of consequence should be argued in the public forum and not buried under the almost 100,000 pages of new rules and regulations published during Obama’s last year in office, for instance.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote in a decision, "We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance." That limiting guidance appears to have support from the conservative justices on the court today.

If the court launches a widespread curtailment of governing by executive agency, as it should, we will see more protests and renewed cries to "Pack the Court," including from members of Congress. After all, they’ll have to get to work.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinio...days-abortion-ruling

Thank you. Your explanations are always enlightening.

flashguy

Important, indeed.

The fallout from such a decision could gut the ATF as well, which we all know rules by regulatory fiat and changes statutory definitions of items on a whim.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Yup, best pride month ever.

And to think...this is ALL DUE to RBG's arrogance and self-importance!

She had the chance to retire under Obama and let him put in a new, younger and ultra liberal justice but she was so DAMN CERTAIN that she'd be retiring with great fanfare under a Hillary administration, LMAO!!!

^^^^^ Just waait until Biden's pick gets in the Court--that will be a real mess.

flashguy

Want your blood to boil? Just read this.



In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court Will Decide Whether We Act on Climate Change

The federal government’s authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions is at risk, as right wing Supreme Court justices rewrite American laws

Jun 28, 2022


The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on West Virginia v. EPA this week, potentially deciding the future of the federal government’s ability to limit the effects of climate change—or even to address the looming climate disaster at all. Here’s what you need to know. (Emphasis added)

What’s at Stake?

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it’s now too late to avoid the disastrous impacts of climate change. Humanity as a whole must instead adapt to them, while simultaneously eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions in the hopes that we don’t make the now inevitable climate disaster even worse.

West Virginia v. EPA challenges the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate the carbon emissions of fossil-fuel-burning power plants under the Clean Air Act. In doing so, the case also threatens the federal government’s ability to write and enforce any emissions-related regulations.

No country has contributed as heavily to climate change as the United States. If this ruling limits federal regulation of climate-change-causing emissions, it could short circuit global attempts to limit the climate disaster and effectively condemn humanity to a bleak future on a rapidly warming planet.

A lot is at stake here, to put it lightly.

What’s Being Argued?

The big question here is who has the authority to write regulations around power plant emissions: federal agencies or Congress itself.

The lawsuit’s a little complicated. With the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, Congress delegated authority to write and enforce air-pollution rules to the EPA, which is part of the Executive branch. It’s the EPA’s job to employ experts and coordinate rule making, with both the industries it regulates and state governments, to ensure the rules it creates are fair, enforceable, and achieve goals set forward by that original act or subsequent legislation. But because the Clean Air Act was written 52 years ago, before climate change was widely understood, it makes no mention of carbon emissions.

In 2015, the Obama administration issued the Clean Power Plan, which was an attempt to bring U.S power plants in compliance with goals outlined by the Paris agreement, by reducing their carbon emissions over time. The lawsuit in question argues that that rule should be invalidated, because the CAA makes no mention of carbon emissions, and the plaintiffs say that it should be up to Congress, not the EPA, to write new rules that regulate those carbon emissions.

That’s a little odd, because the Clean Power Plan never went into effect, and it was repealed by the Trump administration and replaced by the Affordable Clean Power rule in 2019. Last year the District of Columbia Circuit Court invalidated that rule, and the Biden administration has yet to write a new one (it’s waiting to hear the outcome of this case first). So the plaintiffs are suing over a seven-year-old rule that never took effect and is no longer on the books.

Or, perhaps more notably, the Supreme Court chose to take up a case about a seven-year-old law that never went into effect and is no longer on the books. A case in which no harm can be demonstrated, seemingly invalidating any arguments of standing. And that indicates to SCOTUS watchers that members of the court are eager to issue a ruling on the subject of delegation of congressional authority on climate-change regulations. Given this court’s enthusiasm for throwing out established precedent in favor of achieving longstanding right wing political goals, that’s concerning.

“In that sense, this seems like a power grab,” Bethany Davis Noll, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at New York University School of Law, told E&E News.

Who Brought the Lawsuit?

While the case has been condensed to a lawsuit filed by West Virginia, it encompasses challenges originally brought forth by 20 Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as several coal companies.

What Do the Defendants Say?

Oral arguments in the case were heard on February 28, 2022.

The Biden administration argued that the case should be dismissed, since there are no regulations for power plant carbon emissions currently in effect. It was joined by amicus briefs filed by environmental groups, Democratic lawmakers, and even power companies.

“Normally courts review actual regulations, and there is no regulation to review right now,” New York University law professor and environmental law expert Ricky Revesz told CNN. “Whatever the court does will involve speculation, and courts don’t normally—they stress this—give advisory opinions. That’s not what courts do.”

“The Supreme Court must protect the EPA’s ability to guarantee clean air and clean water for all U.S. citizens,” Michael Green, from the American Sustainable Business Network, one of the trade groups to file an amicus brief, told Outside. “For far too long, polluting corporations have taken advantage of our environment as a free dumping ground resulting in a pending climate catastrophe and public health crisis. While we have made giant steps forward to tackle this issue, the job is not done. The Court finds itself at a crossroads. We must continue on the path that upholds the EPA’s mandate for a safe and stable environment and not turn back putting this hard work at risk.”

Have There Been Related Supreme Court Cases in the Past?

In 1984, in Chevron U.S.A v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers, as long as Congress has not created legislation around the precise issue in question. The ruling created a precedent known as the “Chevron deference.” The EPA’s expertise in and ability to regulate carbon emissions, free of court meddling, is its own great example of that. West Virginia v. EPA will challenge the Chevron deference, and through that, could gut the power of federal agencies to regulate industry.

In 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that carbon emissions fit the CAA’s definition of air pollution, and that the EPA was therefore required to regulate them.

In 2015, in Michigan v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must consider costs in its rule making and enforcement of the CAA. Famously, Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to consider financial costs more important than public health, in his majority opinion.

Who Stands to Profit?

In an in-depth feature published earlier this month, The New York Times details a multi-decade effort by right wing think tanks, financiers, and the fossil-fuel industry to eliminate federal regulation of carbon emissions.

“West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists, and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming,” the article reads.

It goes on to detail financial ties between the fossil fuel industry and Court judges, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and the Federalist Society, a legal society that argues for extreme interpretations of the Constitution.

The Times also highlights other lawsuits filed by Republican attorneys general, including one designed to challenge federal regulation of automotive emissions and one that would prevent the federal government from considering the costs of climate change’s impacts. The coordination of these lawsuits across the right wing legal spectrum is described as “a pincer move,” designed to bring together lawsuits created to challenge federal regulation with sympathetic judges “handpicked” to hear them.

The article concludes with a warning that “this is just the beginning,” of the Federalist Society’s efforts to prevent the federal government from addressing climate change.

What Are the Potential Outcomes?
If the court sides with the Biden administration and dismisses the case for lack of standing, the Biden administration will be free to write its own rule on power-plant emissions, and the EPA will be able to continue to regulate carbon emissions once that rule is in place.

There’s also a potential middle ground, in which the court sides with the defendants, but issues a narrow ruling that limits the EPA to regulatory oversight of power plants while preventing the agency from pushing power companies to pivot to renewable energy sources.

The worst-case scenario is a ruling that returns the authority to regulate carbon emissions to Congress. This would prevent the Biden administration from writing and subsequently enforcing a new rule and put the onus for such on a branch of government currently locked in stalemate. It’s unlikely that any new emissions legislation could pass the filibuster in the Senate, even given Democratic control of both houses of Congress, and the White House. Even if such legislation were to pass, efforts to update those rules over time would be similarly frustrated.


Such a ruling could also potentially imperil the ability of any federal agency to regulate any industry. From the United States Department of Agriculture and chicken farms to the Federal Aviation Administration and air safety.

If the Supreme Court diverts the authority to regulate power plant carbon emissions to Congress, it will give polluters a free pass to pump as much carbon into the atmosphere as they’d like. And that will derail not just our nation’s efforts to minimize the climate disaster, but also the world’s. But surely our nation’s highest court would never intentionally reverse 50-plus years of precedent in order to visit demonstrable harm against the American people, right?

Wow, I stopped reading half way through that ridiculous article. Nearly everything in it was pure fiction. I wonder how many more times it used the term "right wing" after I gave up on it. And people read and absorb this trash.

quote:

Originally posted by bcereuss:

as right wing Supreme Court justices rewrite American laws

Yeah right. The Left never seems to have a problem when it's left wing judges rewriting American law, see Obamacare.

quote:

No country has contributed as heavily to climate change as the United States.

Flat-out lie. China and India come to mind.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:

quote:

No country has contributed as heavily to climate change as the United States.

Flat-out lie. China and India come to mind.

flashguy

We are less than 175 years removed from the end of the Mini Ice Age (1200-1850). The earth is returning to equilibrium. The arrogance and hubris of the global warming false prophets to think it's in our power to cause this.

WINNER!!!

https://www.supremecourt.gov/o...pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf

-Rob

^^^^^ Yes!!

The Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the Biden administration’s climate change agenda, ruling Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot pass sweeping regulations that could overhaul entire industries without additional congressional approval.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/po...us-blow-epa-decision

Very good news. I was on the Supreme Court website waiting for release of this ruling and skimmed down to the judgment as soon as it was released. 6-3 good guys, of course.

YES!!!!

And just today I was reading about additional attempted regulatory overreach by the SloPedoJoe&Ho regime...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...-air-pollution-curbs

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
^^^^^ Yes!!

The Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the Biden administration’s climate change agenda, ruling Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot pass sweeping regulations that could overhaul entire industries without additional congressional approval.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/po...us-blow-epa-decision