Pirate's Cove

This is a pretty big decision, potentially more than the Dobbs decision, as it can seriously impact the administrative state

Supreme Court says EPA does not have authority to set climate standards for power plants

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled the Environmental Protection Agency does not have authority to set standards on climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions for existing power plants.

In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said that Congress, not the EPA has that power.

The court’s ruling on the case affects the federal government’s authority to set standards for planet-warming pollutants like carbon dioxide from existing power plants under the landmark Clean Air Act.

The decision is a major setback for the Biden administration’s agenda to combat climate change, specifically the goal to zero out carbon emissions from power plants by 2035 and cut in half the country’s emissions by the end of the decade.

Yay, Constitutional separation of powers! Congress being the lawmakers, not the Executive branch

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, in the case, known as West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency, which was joined by the Supreme Court’s other five conservative members.

The decision is the first time a majority opinion explicitly cited the so-called major questions doctrine to justify a ruling. That controversial doctrine holds that with issues of major national significance, a regulatory agency must have clear statutory authorization from Congress to take certain actions, and not rely on its general agency authority.

Roberts wrote, “There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions” about the regulations in question to the EPA, despite the agency’s belief that “Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in deciding how Americans will get their energy.”

A lot of the articles on this decision are trying to avoid the big part, which is that this decision will apply to all big rules and regulations from Executive branch agencies. Unless they are specifically given the power by a duly passed Legislative branch law, they do not have the power to make big decisions which impact We The People.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent, which was joined by the court’s two other liberals.

“Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to ’the most pressing environmental challenge of our time, ” Kagan wrote in that dissent.

“The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening,” Kagan wrote.

We are a nation of law, not of men, unlike in Kagan’s world, where the government can do whatever the hell it wants when it wants. The Constitution is the primary method for this, and, it means that Congress must do their job in writing specific laws, rather than vague ones. For instance, Obamacare said not a word about contraception. So, where did the Contraception Mandate come from? Perhaps some minimal language in Ocare, perhaps from some other vague law. Congress needs to give specific authorization. They are the law making branch. That’s their job. Spend less time yammering and complaining and Twittering and posing and stuff. Craft a proper law. Consider in Ocare, Congress abdicated its responsibility in saying what full time was. And how long someone can be without insurance before being penalized. At least in this case they specifically authorized HHS and IRS to make the determination. Congress never authorized EPA to manufacture rules for the climate change scam.

So, yes, this sets a standard for all Executive branch agencies that whatever they want to do needs to be specifically authorized by Congress, at least if it has a major impact on citizen’s lives. This is why all the leftist news agencies and such were saying a few weeks ago

Supreme Court climate case might end regulation

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the coming days or weeks that could curtail EPA’s ability to drive down carbon emissions at power plants.

But it could go much further than that.

Legal experts are waiting to see if the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA begins to chip away at the ability of federal agencies — all of them, not just EPA — to write and enforce regulations. It would foreshadow a power shift with profound consequences, not just for climate policy but virtually everything the executive branch does, from directing air traffic to protecting investors. (snip)

“The broader picture of what may be happening is that the Court is firing a shot across the bow of the regulatory state to say, ‘Stop thinking about new problems or improved solutions to old ones, just think of your job narrowly and imagine yourself back at the time when Congress wrote the enabling statute — even if that was 1970,’” said Sankar, who clerked for Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in 2006.

If Congress wants action, they need to specifically authorize it, not write broad, vague legislation that puts the power in the hands of the Executive Branch, since the job of the Exec branch is to implement legislation, not create all the rules and regs.