Justices Argue EPA’s Authority to Regulate Carbon Emissions

On Monday, the Supreme Court appeared inclined to nix the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. The Court’s decision could further impede President Biden’s plans to fight global warming, which is stalled in the Senate.

The case, Peabody Coal Company v. EPA, was brought by Peabody Coal Company and several others and consolidated into a two-hour argument.

True to form, Justice Samuel Alito, argued that the EPA “sought unfettered power” over major parts of the economy.

“What your interpretation of the statute claims for EPA is not a technical matter,” he told Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. “It is not a question of how to reduce emissions from particular sources, but you are claiming that the interpretation gives you the authority to set industrial policy and energy policy.”

Arguing a hypothetical?

The case comes at a crucial time for the Biden administration.

Although the infrastructure law enacted last year included funding for renewable energy, Congress stripped Biden’s Bring Back Better Act of its signature provision to incentivize power plants to move away from coal.

President Biden plans to issue a rule to do just that, but argued since there’s no rule currently in place, the Court is arguing a hypothetical.

Justice Elena Kagan, along with the Court’s other liberals, Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, asked whether regulatory mandates — such as requiring power producers to change their fuel for producing electricity — really do exceed EPA’s statutory authority.

“The use of the word ‘system’ in the Clean Air Act suggests that Congress “wanted to give the agency flexibility to regulate as times changed, as circumstances changed, as economic impacts changed, all things that they could not possibly have known at the time,” Kagan said.

District of Columbia Ruling

The New York Times’ Adam Liptak reported that a divided three-judge panel of the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled:

“The EPA has ample discretion in carrying out its mandate. But it may not shirk its responsibility by imagining new limitations that the plain language of the statute does not clearly require.”

The DC Circuit decided the Trump administration’s plan, called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, was a misguided regulation, Liptak wrote.

He said Trump enacted the rule in 2019, replacing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have forced utilities to move away from coal and embrace renewable energy.

The Obama plan had aimed to cut emissions from the power sector by 32 percent by 2030 to its 2005 level.

“The Court heard the four cases including West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, on the same day that a body of experts published the most comprehensive look to date at the threats posed by global warming,“ Liptak wrote

“The report approved by 195 governments found that the dangers from climate change are bigger and unfolding faster than previously expected and that humanity may struggle to adapt to the consequences unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced in the next few decades.”

Justice Barrett Could Break with Conservatives

Meanwhile, Justice Amy Coney Barrett may be the Conservative justice who sides with the three liberals and swing vote Chief Justice John Roberts.

Barrett noted that significant prior rulings have focused on rules for topics outside an agency’s expertise — such as the CDC’s Covid-19 eviction prohibition or the FDA’s ability to regulate tobacco.

“Here, for thinking about EPA regulating greenhouse gases, well, there’s a match between the regulation and the agency’s wheelhouse, right?” she asked.