SCOTUS upholds EPA regulation of greenhouse gases

While the science deniers of the modern-day GOP assault the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a regulatory agency which was created with the support of your father’s GOP to clean up the environment, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases in what are collectively known as the “greenhouse gas” cases brought by industry groups, and the state of Texas (see note below).

The New York Times reports, In Victory for Obama, Court Backs Rules on Power Plants:

The Supreme Court on Monday handed President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency a victory in its efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants, even as it criticized what it called the agency’s overreaching.

“E.P.A. is getting almost everything it wanted in this case,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in summarizing the decision from the bench. “It sought to regulate sources it said were responsible for 86 percent of all the greenhouse gases emitted from stationary sources nationwide. Under our holdings, E.P.A. will be able to regulate sources responsible for 83 percent of those emissions.”

Justice Scalia said the agency was free to do so as long as the sources in question “would need permits based on their emissions of more conventional pollutants.”

That part of the decision, which effectively sustained regulation of nearly all the sources the agency had sought to regulate, was decided by a 7-to-2 vote. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined that part of the decision.

The agency expressed satisfaction with the ruling.

“The Supreme Court’s decision is a win for our efforts to reduce carbon pollution because it allows E.P.A., states and other permitting authorities to continue to require carbon pollution limits in permits for the largest pollution sources,” the agency said in a statement.

Another part of the decision rejected, in harsh terms, the agency’s primary rationale for the regulations. The agency had contended it would interpret the Clean Air Act to require regulation of far fewer stationary sources of pollution than the law seemed to require.

“An agency has no power to ‘tailor’ legislation to bureaucratic policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory terms,” Justice Scalia wrote. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined that part of the decision, which was decided by a 5-to-4 vote.

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The decision did not seem to directly affect the administration’s recently announced plans to cut carbon pollution under a different set of regulations.

The regulations challenged in Monday’s decision built on the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in 2007 in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, which required the agency to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles if it found that they endangered public health or welfare.

The agency made such a finding, saying that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” pose a danger to “current and future generations,” and it set limits on emissions from new vehicles.

The agency made such a finding, saying that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” pose a danger to “current and future generations,” and it set limits on emissions from new vehicles.

The case decided Monday was Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1146. Read the opinion Here (.pdf).
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NOTE: Greenhouse Gas cases: Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1272, American Chemistry Council v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1248, Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1254, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1146, Texas v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1269, and Southeastern Legal Foundation v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1268.