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US Supreme Court says EPA can’t regulate carbon pollution under Clean Air Act
- asguy 4y agoThe US Congress better get to work. They've spent way too much time asleep at the wheel, giving the executive branch carte blanche to do whatever their whims are, rather than passing actual law.
- rat87 4y agoOr you know they could delegate their authority to an agency staffed with experts. I'm all for Congress actually doing its job but we all know they won't and that passing each regulation by hand isn't possible without some sort of parliamentary system where legislative and executive branches are combined
- worker_person 4y agoWhat do you do when an agency exceeds its authority? Say FDA decides that houses can make people better or sicker. So they start passing housing regulations. This would be a drastic overreach outside of their law. It's experts making decision. They may even be correct. But according to todays ruling congress would need to authorize such a broad power grab. This is what has been happening for decades, the court is finally telling Congress to get off its rear and do its job.
- drewrv 4y agoCouldn't congress "get off its rear and do its job" by forbidding the FDA from regulating housing? Requiring every regulatory action to require an affirmative from congress is absurd. Besides that, congress controls the budget for these agencies. Simply by funding the EPA and the FDA, it demonstrates a level of support for their actions.
- hellojesus 4y agoNot every regulatory action requires congressional affirmation. Congress is allowed to delegate their legislative authority to a third party, but it must do so through an intelligible clause. This clause states a clear objective function to the agency. The issue is when agencies make laws that are unrelated to, in conflict with, or do not clearly achieve the goals of the intelligible clause because those are laws that the agency is not empowered to create.
- sudosysgen 4y agoCongress giving the EPA a mandate over emissions of pollutants and the EPA setting emissions targets for coal power plants seems to be a clear and objective function through an intelligible clause. Addendum : The CAA doesn't contain a list of pollutants. It contains a definition, which CO2 fits. This already went before the Supreme Court in Massachusetts vs. EPA and set the precedent that CO2 must be considered a pollutant under the CAA. This precedent was already challenged by a few states and was upheld, and the Supreme Court didn't overrule it today either, instead going for another line of argument.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoAccording the Clean Air Act, C02 is not a "pollutant". The EPA can't just decide that it is, and start issuing economy changing directives - regardless if they are right. This should be very easy for congress to fix if they want to.
- hellojesus 4y agoYes, you're right. I was initially thinking this came down to an intelligible clause similar to how people argue OSHA is unconstitutional due to competiting intelligible clauses. My failure was thinking new and existing pollutants needed to have the same solution, and the constraints for arriving to the correct solution were in competition. Upon further review: a reading of the SCOTUS pdf combined with the referenced laws, I do now believe this was a bad conclusion. Major questions doctrine seems unbased in an measurable way. Instead, the court should have ruled that the EPA currently had the authority to do this as it was clearly granted in law, and if Congress wanted to limit it, then they would need to do so legislatively. Not the current decision which says that Congress probably didn't mean what they wrote into law because they dun deligated a lot of power. Edit: someone else wrote this, which does make sense if their supposition is. Regardless, I'll need to read more of the laws beyond 111d. > No it isn’t. The Clean Air Act is all about requiring polluters to use control technology, and requiring new sources to use better and more expensive control technology than existing sources. That’s the program Congress designed. Restructuring the energy industry to address climate is a different solution to a different problem, related only by the commonality of emissions into air. It’s like using drug laws to regulate processed foods because both involve harm caused by ingesting things.
- taylodl 4y agoI answered this question above but to answer you directly Congress can use the lawmaking process to overturn any regulation they find egregious. They can also pass laws updating the regulatory powers of an agency. Don't believe the congresspeople claiming "there's nothing they can do" about regulatory agencies. They're lying. Shocking, I know! :)
- biomcgary 4y agoYou have identified the core of the regulatory challenge: Congress shirks responsibility. My question, what path makes Congress more likely to be responsible (and, upstream of that, get voters to hold them responsible)? Do we want regulations to multiply or languish in the absence of congressional action? I think voters are more likely to demand practical, governance oriented representatives if the regulatory agencies aren't bandaging over the problems. Do we want face the pain now or will we just keep kicking the can down the road?
- craftsman 4y agoThe law can provide the authority to act, the boundaries of action, and define the intent. The agencies, by taking on the role of determining & implementing the details of Congress’ directive, reduce the overt political influence that tends to dilute or pollute (no pun intended) the aims of the legislation. If Congress finds that the agency has stepped outside its mandate, they can correct the legislation to be more specific.
- jnwatson 4y agoCongress is broken. The system is fundamentally flawed. The Senate by Constitutional design is undemocratic and non-representative. Coupled with the cloture rule it is an untenable system. Unless our failing voting systems accidentally elect a set of people capable of fixing the system, there’s no hope for Congressional action.
- taylodl 4y agoJust to be clear, are you saying every regulation created by the EPA, FDA, FTC, FCC, SEC, et. al. should be a law passed by Congress and the Senate, get refereed, updated law passed by Congress and the Senate, and go forward for presidential approval? I just want to make sure I understand your intent. As it is, or was as the case may be, this lawmaking process could be used to overrule a regulation that was viewed to be errant. The lawmaking apparatus would only be invoked on an exceptional basis. It seems as though you're advocating for the invocation of the lawmaking apparatus on a regular basis? That's what I'm wanting to confirm whether that's what you're actually saying.
- biomcgary 4y agoNot the original poster, but yes, in a democracy I would like our elected lawmakers to do their job of making laws. I'm happy to have bills drafted by experts in the regulatory bodies. However, those experts are not accountable in any direct way to those being governed by the laws/regulations that they create. I'm still attached to the whole "consent of the governed" idea. I'm highly opposed to "divine right of the technocrats (to whom we shall all bow for their superior knowledge and genetically encoded abilities)".
- tankenmate 4y agoThe US Code is already 185,000 pages long. If every regulation derived from those laws was included it would easily come to 20x that amount; so about 3.6+ million pages long. If every page of that had to be scrutinised by Congress then the legislative branch would grind to a halt. Just like the fact that one person alone can't do everything in an organisation, Congress physically can't author, vote and oversee every regulation from every law. There just aren't enough hours in the day.
- juve1996 4y agoCongress could just as easily limit the powers of the EPA via vote now. This remedy still exists. The court overstepped, again, and in an unsurprisingly partisan way. Just what our country needs from its institutions...
- warning26 4y ago
- ATsch 4y agoIt's days like these where you really wish there would be some sort of legislative body that could do something about this sort of thing.
- rat87 4y agoThey did by creating departments and delegating to them
- madengr 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- googlryas 4y agoI think the issue here is that the USSC says that isn't really what the legislative branch did.
- drewbug01 4y agoAnd that, itself, is a very novel view. The EPA isn't exactly a new agency, and the authority delegated to it has been broadly agreed upon for decades.
- googlryas 4y agoThat's my problem with these rulings...I can understand how they make sense even if the outcome is a negative one from my perspective, but what kind of world are we going to live in if these huge changes keep getting handed down from courts allowing things sometimes, disallowing them other times, depending on the viewpoints of those who sit on the courts.
- drewbug01 4y agoHonestly, I don't believe that courts should never change their minds. I think a healthy government, in fact, must change with the times. Of course, there's a lot of debate about "how much" and "when" and "how" - which is perfectly reasonable. That said - in the past the SCOTUS has typically tried not to make massive, sweeping changes, unless truly warranted. And even then, they typically make massive, sweeping changes only in instances that expand rights or eliminate harm. They used to try very hard not to cause undue harm with their rulings. Think about something like the cases that legalized same-sex marriage: a big, sweeping change, to be sure - but the only "harm" from that change was that some bigots now have to recognize a marriage they would prefer not to (and only in the capacity as a government official, or in that of a public business - they remain quite free to be as hateful as they like otherwise). Even though the change was large, the fallout was quite minimal (despite breathless predictions to the contrary by conservatives clearly arguing in bad-faith). Sadly the court seems to have abandoned that general principle. This ruling is immensely harmful, not just to the EPA but to the general regulatory state that Congress explicitly created over the years. The fallout from this ruling will be vast, and agencies are going to find themselves increasingly unable to actually regulate anything as they find themselves constantly tied up in court. It's going to cause a lot of very real harm to a lot of people in the country, and we will be feeling its effects for a very long time.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThe clean air act clearly gives the EPA power to regulate emissions of pollutants that are a threat to welfare. It's not really arguable that that coal power plants fall into that or that greenhouse gases are pollutants that are a threat to welfare. This is a ridiculous decision that flies in the face of the law, and their justification that somehow this is too much and that Congress needed to specify that they had explicit authority over power plants because that is "too significant" is patently ridiculous. Congress gave them a mandate over pollutants, I don't see how that is possibly an overreach. The position that Congress can't put an agency in power of regulating emissions because that's too general is ridiculous.
- jaybrendansmith 4y agoExactly. We've gone beyond anything that remotely resembles the law. They are destroying the SC. Next step is for Biden to ignore their ruling. Then comes a breakdown of the federal government. This is the beginning of the end. I don't know about you, but I feel if the SC can do it, why should I obey the law? Fuck this SC.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoBut C02 is not designated as a pollutant according the CAA.
- sudosysgen 4y agoFirst of all, the Supreme Court doesn't make such an argument, and the fact that CO2 fits the definition of pollutant was upheld in federal jurisprudence. The CAA does not contain a specific list of pollutants. It has a definition, and the EPA may regulate any emissions of substances that fit those definitions. So, the EPA can consider a given substance that fits the definition to be under the purview of a program under the CAA on a case by case basis.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sschueller 4y agoNice how 9 judges and a grid locked congress can affect the whole world. Is there any hope that congress can get a meaningful bill passed in the next few years or is it going to take another 4 years or even longer wasting precious time we don't have?
- morninglight 4y agoHere is your answer in clear and blunt language: https://www.c-span.org/video/?521309-5/washington-journal-elie-mystal-discusses-recent-supreme-court-decisions-including-abortion-guns&live&# https://www.c-span.org/video/?521309-5/washington-journal-el...! .
- elliekelly 4y ago> Is there any hope that congress can get a meaningful bill passed in the next few years Definitely not. And it's largely thanks to one person who also happens to be from West Virginia.
- sudosysgen 4y agoIt's not one person. If Manchin wasn't there someone else would be the "one person". They're just happy to let Manchin take the fall since it doesn't hurt him politically. If it was a single person then the democrats would put enough pressure on him to yield - god knows they have the ability to do so. He is toxic enough to their party that it's preferable to have him replaced by a Republican in the long term.
- morninglight 4y agoAt least one member of Congress claims the Supreme Court can be overruled. https://youtu.be/tApnkKi7Suc https://youtu.be/tApnkKi7Suc
- sudosysgen 4y agoYes, it can. Congress has the power to pack the courts if it so chooses, which was actually an incredibly important power in US history.
- tyronehed 4y ago[dead]
- voisin 4y agoSounds a lot like: “Take experts (these agencies) and put them under MBA decision makers (congress) who are accountable to shareholders (in an ideal world, voters, but in the real world, donors).” What could go wrong?
- henearkr 4y agoThe Conservative Supreme Justices are in a position of absolute power, where they take any decision they gut-feel (mainly using their religious and conservative beliefs of course), and they don't really need to give any justification at all (because there is no accountability whatsoever, as no poll will ever take back their seat), so any whimsical half-assed not even syntactically correct garble will do. They really are in a position similar to leaders of authoritarian regimes (and have as little democratic legitimacy), and they are really as harmful as such tyrants. They should be removed, that is obvious.
- ab_testing 4y agoSo, which government body is currently in charge of carbon pollution generated by power plants. Does this also go back to the states where each state has its own discretion to decide what is excessive or acceptable pollution generated by a power plant.
- feet 4y agoDidn't you know? Air stays within state boundaries