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In this case, as I understand it, the EPA was declaring they had authority to enforce some new rules by interpreting where congress wrote "may" as "must". Wheth
by Covzire 4y ago
In this case, as I understand it, the EPA was declaring they had authority to enforce some new rules by interpreting where congress wrote "may" as "must". Whether you agree with the EPA's motives or not, it should concern everyone that un-elected bureaucrats have been increasingly inventing or hallucinating the language of their mandates to turn them into whatever they wanted, whenever it suits them, and this was a much needed rebuke of that behavior.
- Clubber 4y agoAgreed, the executive branch (the bureaucracies) does not make laws, congress does. The fact that the bureaucracies are governing above and beyond what they are legally allowed to do is actually horrifying and very undemocratic.
- Sporktacular 4y agoHuh? It's the executive's job to execute the laws - which is exactly what they were doing, until the court changed it mind on how that should be done. If this was true it would have been the case for all previous court panels. That it's not shows that it's the court playing politics now.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago>In this case, as I understand it, the EPA was declaring they had authority to enforce some new rules by interpreting where congress wrote "may" as "must". Congress didn't pass a law and disappear. If Congress felt that the EPA was misinterpreting the language of the Clean Air Act it could have passed a law limiting the agency's powers. The fact that it did not do so is the strongest rebuttal to the claim that the EPA was operating outside its mandate. This decision is an announcement by the Court that Congress can no longer be trusted to govern the agencies it oversees.
- cryptonector 4y agoBut Congress hasn't disappeared now either and can easily s/may/must/. What's the problem?
- matthewdgreen 4y agoBecause the Court has taken an issue that Congress did not [yet] show any urgent inclination to act on, i.e., alleged overreach by the EPA over many Congressional sessions with many different partisan compositions. And they have taken away Congress's discretion to decide its own agenda and priorities by turning this into an emergency that has to be dealt with right now by this Congress. There is real harm to this: it halts an existing regulatory process, and it may take years for Congress to repair the damage.
- cryptonector 4y agoSince the EPA had tried to moot the case by holding back, there must be no emergency.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoThe fact that nobody was harmed by this regulation -- and there was no urgency -- and yet the Court still took the case is indeed a huge problem that underlines my concerns with this case. Why did the Court step into this case and override both Congress and the executive branch when the regulation itself wasn't harming the plaintiffs? The emergency here is that the EPA now has no idea what its authority will be on any regulatory actions regarding CO2. (And when Congress finally legislates, it won't know what its authority is either.)
- cryptonector 4y agoThe court decided there was a harm. Seems reasonable to me. > The emergency here is that the EPA now has no idea what its authority will be on any regulatory actions regarding CO2. That's hyperbole.
- jdasdf 4y ago>Congress didn't pass a law and disappear. If Congress felt that the EPA was misinterpreting the language of the Clean Air Act it could have passed a law limiting the agency's powers. It is not congresses job to enforce the law by writing new laws.