The Supreme Court on Friday overturned four decades of legal precedent in a ruling that would significantly limit federal agencies' regulatory powers and have far-reaching environmental implications.
The court struck down one of the most cited precedents in American law, the so-called Chevron deference, which guided courts to defer to federal agencies’ expertise when interpreting unclear laws. Instead, the justices ruled that courts should have more authority to interpret such laws.
As our colleagues at the Times have written, environmentalists fear that the decision could weaken or repeal hundreds of regulations, particularly EPA limits on air and water pollution, regulations on toxic chemicals and policies to combat climate change.
The ruling represents a major victory for conservative groups in their decades-long effort to curtail the federal government’s regulatory power. Mandy Gunasekara, a former top adviser to the EPA under President Trump and a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, celebrated the court’s decision. “This creates a tremendous opportunity to challenge these regulations,” she told The Times. “And when the administration changes in November, there could be additional momentum to take control of the administrative state overall.”
To find out what happens next, we reached out to climate experts, legal experts, and activists. We asked each expert what the ruling means and how it could affect the lives of Americans.
Below is an excerpt from their response.
How can everyday life change?
Manish Bapna, President, Natural Resources Defense Council: “The court’s action puts at serious risk the basic safeguards that protect key parts of modern society that we rely on and even take for granted: clean air and water, healthy wildlife and lands, safe food, medicine, jobs, airplanes, bridges and cars, and an economy unhampered by predatory lending, stock market fraud and credit card fraud.”
Tara Brock, Pacific ocean Legal Director and Senior Counsel, Oceana: “Unfortunately, any decision that undermines environmental protections will harm Americans' health and their wallets. The danger of these decisions is that more Americans will suffer the worse effects of climate change, air pollution, and other environmental harms, as well as other harms that government regulations are designed to protect.”
Sam Shankar, Senior Vice President of Programs, EarthjusticeThe ruling could have “profound implications,” he said.
“Whenever the courts make it harder for governments to regulate and easier for businesses to challenge regulations, they make it more likely that industries will pursue profits to the detriment of the public and the planet,” he said. “It’s basic economics.”
How could climate regulation change?
Michael Berger, Executive Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University: “This makes climate regulations under the Clean Air Act more vulnerable to judicial overturn. “This is a transfer of power from the agency to the courts.”
Bapna New Biden administration rules, including measures to regulate emissions from cars and trucks, were written in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning the Chevron ruling, the administration said.
As a result, he said, the new rule could be more resistant to legal challenges. “EPA has presented a clear legal analysis explaining why it interprets the law the way it does. correct or best Read – a widely accepted test now – with a strong factual scientific and technical record supporting each rule. There is no guarantee that the court's conservative majority will agree, but the agency has provided a sound legal basis for the rule in anticipation of a post-Chevron regime.”
Richard Wiles, President, Climate Integrity Center: “The sky is the limit for industry. No regulation is immune from challenge. For example, if industry decides to challenge EPA’s basic authority to regulate CO2, it could win and have a huge impact on climate policy. The same could apply to all regulations, mileage standards, power plant emissions, etc.”
Thomas Berry, Legal Fellow at the Cato Institute, and Travis Fisher, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy Research: “It’s important to note that many climate-related policies are issued by independent agencies, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. These rulemakers cannot be removed by the president for policy disagreements, so there is no clear chain of democratic accountability.
“Going forward, courts will now have to review rules according to their best interpretation of the statutory text (as passed by the elected legislature), and not defer to the rulemakers' interpretations, which are often based more on the rulemakers' policy preferences than on their ability to interpret the law.”
badger Her organization said the court's decision provided “a glimmer of hope.”
She said of the ruling: “Chief Justice Roberts created space to allow Congress to delegate agency discretion to fill in the details of the statutory system by using language like ‘appropriate’ and ‘reasonable.’ This could provide space for agencies to address climate issues.”
What Will Happen to America's Climate Goals?
Bapna: “Because the new climate rules do not rely on Chevron, and because Congress strengthened climate and clean energy incentives and EPA’s regulatory authority through the Inflation Reduction Act, we believe this court ruling should not block or impede climate progress in the United States. While there will be plenty of litigation, we believe EPA’s standards meet the court’s new test.”
Wilds: “Without clear action from Congress, there is no scenario in which the country can achieve the kind of climate policy that we need to actually solve the problem. So when we look at it narrowly from a climate perspective, Chevron is a spotlight on our collective failure to create the power necessary to break the oil and gas industry’s monopoly on national climate and energy policy.”
Sankar: “This will certainly dampen the enthusiasm of agencies like the EPA to issue aggressive new climate regulations based on existing law. And it will make it harder for President Biden’s sweeping pollution control regulations to be defended in court.”
What regulations are being challenged?
Burger: “At this point, every regulation this administration has put on the books related to climate change has been challenged almost immediately after it’s been announced. So I don’t know if this makes it more likely that it will be challenged sooner.”
badger: “We expect industry to continue to attack regulations that protect Americans by protecting the environment. But for our marine conservation sector, it is unclear whether and, if so, what the impact will be.”
Berry and Fisher: “In the short term, this ruling means that courts are more likely to limit EPA’s ability to use old provisions of the Clean Air Act to enact sweeping climate rules,” they said, pointing to the power plant regulations. “Courts will now evaluate EPA’s interpretation solely on the strength of its legal justification, without any deference to EPA’s views.”
Sankar He said the biggest target is EPA's vague language rules. “But frankly,” he said, “industry is likely to prioritize challenging regulations (new or old) that impose the greatest costs. They will do so whenever they can argue that the agency's regulations are not clearly justified by the language of the underlying statute.”
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