This is a YUUUUGE win!
The court’s decision in the West Virginia v. EPA case decided that the EPA doesn’t have the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members dissenting.
Chief Justice John Roberts, said that Congress had not explicitly given the EPA the authority to regulate emissions.
Excerpt from Justice Roberts:
But the only interpretive question before us, and the only one we answer, is more narrow: whether the “best system of emission reduction” identified by EPA in the Clean Power Plan was within the authority granted to the Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. For the reasons given, the answer is no.
Here’s the final paragraph of the Opinion of the Court:
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.” New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 187 (1992). But it is not plausible that Congress gave 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. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It would be interesting to read of what the dissenters said. More “substantive due process?”
Sadly, like everything else it seems, the Biden administration will be ahead of this and will have numerous alternative means of achieving the same end.
Careful – it has been remanded. It ain’t over yet.
I think that in addition to clipping EPA’s wings on regulating CO2, it is virtually certain that there will be a SCOTUS ruling nullifying SEC’s new requirement for companies to disclose their CO2 emissions and their actions to reduce CO2, a new rule that was just proposed in March of this year. If EPA does not have the authority from Congress to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, then certainly SEC also does not the authority from Congress to regulate disclosures of CO2 emissions by companies. Again, no such Federal law authorizes that action, and now there is no basis even to claim that CO2 emissions present any threat to anybody at all.
However, given that SEC’s current membership has proposed this rule, it seems likely they will still attempt to impose it, only to be challenged in Federal court immediately, with courts staying the rule until SCOTUS finally overturns it.
And this also calls into question the authority of States to attempt to regulate CO2, because CO2 obviously crosses all state and international borders. Expect a slew of lawsuits filed by interstate companies against states like California and New York seeking to overturn their laws attempting to regulate CO2 via the “Federal preemption” requirement in the Constitution.
This ruling is only the first domino to fall in the warmunists failed attempts to regulate CO2 in America. It will all fall apart within the next several years.
O how slowly, creakily turn the wheels of Justice … Yet it turns!
This ruling has much wider implications. Well beyond climate questions. The SC has given The People a mechanism to control the Beaurocracy.
All I can say is… Thank God for Donald J. Trump!
The EPA, IRS, etc. are part of the Executive Branch of the US Government under The Constitution.
Being part of the Executive Branch, they do not have the authority to legislate, enact regulations that have the effect of Law.
(Even “Executive Orders” in the absence of a clear and present danger have gone too far. If Congress has time to act to address an emergency, there is no need for an “Executive Order”.)
Laws are for Congress, another Branch, to pass.
Our 3rd Branch of Constitutional Government has taken a step to correct the imbalance that has gone of for way too long!
(I sense another temper tantrum coming on!)
For those who want to read it for themselves.
Link to the ruling : https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
The above PDF file is 89 pages long and contains :
It is sad, but predictable, that Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer seem to have no problem with the EPA’s self-declared Enabling Act.
I’m willing to bet 6 of the justice’s also know what a woman is
WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA KAGAN, J., dissenting
Climate change’s causes and dangers are no longer subject to serious doubt. Modern science is “unequivocal that human influence”—in particular, the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide—“has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report, The Physical Science Basis: Headline Statements 1 (2021)
So says a judge that is supposed to rule on law rather than state what ‘science’ she believes in.
Oh, my…
Not a good week for Leftists. Bless their hearts.
The Legislative Branch will now actually have to do their jobs and pass laws with detailed and defined parameters with careful cost/benefit analysis, rather than giving basically all authority to the Executive Branch’s unelected Bureaucracy to implement massive $multi-trillion/year environmental policies, regulations, mandates, laws, rules, etc., that have utterly destroyed the US economy for Leftists’ vain attempt at creating Utopia…
We should shutdown the Federal EPA and leave it to states to determine their own environmental policies that match the desires of their constituents.
I read the Robert’s opinion, Gorsuch’s concurrence, and Kayan’s dissent before commenting.
It is a victory for common sense, but a much narrower win than many commenters here believe. The ruling concerns the Obama CPP (where EPA would have forced electricity generation from coal to natgas), and is based on the pre-existing major questions doctrine. That doctrine holds that on major questions (there are, as Gorsuch explains, three categories), the congressional delegation of power to an agency must be clear and explicit. Here, in the CCA, it obviously wasn’t.
It does nothing about Mass v EPA or the subsequent EPA CO2 endangerment finding. It does nothing about linear no threshold EPA regulation (pm2.5 is an example). It is limited to existing electricity generation facilities, because that was the scope of the CPP—so does not address issues like Cali dictating national auto emission standards (which Trump stopped but Biden again greenlighted, probably a future SCOTUS major questions case concerning the ability of the EPA to grant a Cali exception).
Now it is time to remove the CO2 as a pollutant decree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Probably the biggest legacy of Trump will be 3 SCOTUS picks. And about the only good thing I can say about the Senate in the last couple of decades is stonewalling Obama’s final SCOTUS pick. You can bet the Progressives are already scheming ways to “cancel” SCOTUS.
Notice the court is pre-judged, endorsed “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.” They only rejected, correctly, because the law didn’t grant the EPA those powers
And then there’s this Deep State pronouncement.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/19/biden-epa-chief-vows-to-ignore-supreme-court-on-epa-regulation-of-coal-plants/
There is no aspect of your existence from conception until long after death that does not involve the emission of CO2. Once the state asserts the authority to regulate CO2, there is absolutely no aspect of your life that will be safe from authoritarian control. Anything the Progressive state decides it doesn’t like about your life, they would be free to regulate.
This ruling is a big pushback against inevitable totalitarianism.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6948300959940841472-iVPU?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web
Prior to this you had the Senate vote unanimously against the Green New Deal because they had the regulatory overreach route going for them in the Party quest for donations at your expense.
I guess EPA can return to “all things asthma” again for agenda war room operations.
I guess Obama can now sulk at his beach mansions after this. The great con job has ended.
Maybe science can be saved next?
I’m not sure what good news could beat this–maybe Putin poisoned by his aids or “girlfriend.”