In a sweeping Thursday ruling that some experts warn could endanger a host of environmental and public health protections, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority declared that federal environmental regulators cannot take the dramatic action necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and protect the public from climate disasters without new legislation from a fiercely divided Congress.
The 6-3 ruling by the court’s conservative bloc is a massive, but not unexpected, setback for Democrats and President Biden, who has committed to cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
“I think this ruling makes it much more difficult if not impossible for Biden to meet those climate goals,” said Anthony Moffa, an associate professor of law at the University of Maine, in an interview.
The case that resulted in Thursday’s decision pitted the Biden administration and environmentalists against coal companies and Republican attorneys general from 20 states, many of them major producers of fossil fuels and pollution.
The long-running fight began in 2015 when the Environmental Protection Agency tried to limit greenhouse gas emission from power plants following President Obama’s signing of the Paris climate agreement. Red state attorneys general and coal companies quickly filed suit, and in 2016 the Supreme Court put the Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan on hold while challenges wound through the courts. The Trump administration repealed the Obama-era plan —the rules never went into effect — before issuing much weaker rules that were also overturned.
Today’s Supreme Court ruling declared that the EPA doesn’t have the authority to implement such rules. These rules were created to encourage and push the sector towards cleaner fuels, renewable energy, and climate change mitigation.
As the case moved through the courts, the global environment crisis grew. Scientists began to link climate change with violent storms, deadly wildfires, power cuts, heat waves, and other disasters. The most recent United Nations climate report declares that it’s too late to avoid many of the disastrous effects of climate change — in fact, some of them are already here — but we must make drastic reductions in fossil fuel pollution and transform our way of life to thwart the worst impacts.
Under pressure from environmental groups, the Biden administration is eager to draft fresh rules that would move the energy grid away from coal and towards renewables so the nation can reach its climate goals, and regulators were waiting on today’s decision to act. Experts warn that the ruling will not only put a halt to federal efforts to combat climate change, but it also sets a dangerous precedent and could be challenged in court regarding a variety of federal environmental protections.
The issue is the “major decisions”doctrine, a legal theory, was pushed by conservatives on court and a network of right-wing think tanks, industry groups, right-wing Federalist Society members on the judiciary and Republican attorneys general who challenged the Clean Power Plan and the EPA’s authority over air pollution from power plants. According to this legal thinking, “major decisions” around national politics and the economy — such as transforming the energy grid to thwart impending climate catastrophe — should be made by Congress, not government agencies.
The Clean Air Act grants the EPA enough authority to regulate power plants and their pollution, as have environmentalists and the Obama administrations. Congress has failed for years to pass climate legislation, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in writing the Supreme Court’s opinion in the majority, effectively punting the issue back to lawmakers.
However, Moffa said the ruling does not clearly define what is “not” a major political and economic decision for the country, opening the door for polluters to file more legal challenges to longstanding environmental and public health protections.
“This is huge,” said Paasha Mahdavi, director of the Energy Governance and Political Economy LabInterview with the University of California, Santa Barbara “In a way, a case like this lays the groundwork for what some have called ‘the dismantling of the regulatory state.’”
Mahdavi said that the court could have ruled more severe, potentially putting at risk long-standing rules protecting the public against deadly pollutants like carbon dioxide, if it had looked beyond the now-defunct Clean Power Plan. Moffa said that the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expected such a ruling to be issued by a Supreme Court with a solid conservative minority. However, that doesn’t make it easier for the administration to respond to, in practice.
“The real problem is we’re already behind the eight ball and to have to restart,” Moffa said. “Even if the next thing the EPA does is upheld by the court, it could take years to get that finished, and we don’t have years.”
A few power utilities had sided against the Biden administration, the EPA, after investing in new technology in anticipation of federal action to reduce carbon emissions. Some business groups also condemned this ruling. For example, the Great Lakes Business Network warned in a statement that the court’s move to obstruct the EPA’s authority over power plant pollution will threaten the region’s “freshwater future.”
Climate activists and environmentalists quickly called for Congress to act after the ruling was issued. Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said the ruling is not the end of climate action, and called on activists to continue to pressure officials to cut ties with fossil fuels at every level of government.
“Congress must tackle poisoning climate emissions at their source by curtailing new fossil fuel development before it starts,” Hauter said in a statement. “This includes halting oil and gas exports, which drive demand for expanded drilling and fracking, while raising fuel and energy costs for consumers here at home.”
