Supreme Court rules against EPA on pollution rules

Washington Examiner ^ | 6-29-2015 | John Siciliano

[sheikdetailfeather]

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Environmental Protection Agency pollution rules for power plants Monday, in a blow to President Obama's environmental agenda.

The EPA rules in question regulate hazardous air pollutants and mercury from coal- and oil-fired power plants, known as the MATS regulations. The regulations went into effect April 16. The utility industry argues that the rules cost them billions of dollars to comply and that EPA ignored the cost issue in putting the regulations into effect.

Many of the companies have either made the investments or closed power plants to comply. If the investments necessary to upgrade a plant to comply with the regulation aren't justified when considering the operational costs, revenues earned and other factors, then the decision is made to retire it.

[tbw2]

I can’t help but wonder if there was politicking - you vote for gay marriage, I’ll vote against the EPA.

[Hardens Hollow]

Not all power plants are Big Business. Many are owed by small companies and those are the ones going bankrupt from excessive regulations because they can’t complete with the large corporations.

But who loses as well are the consumers. More regulations = higher costs passed on to us.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Supreme Court Ruling Of The United States

Scrotus for short.

[Rodamala]

so all the EPA needs to do is half-ass slap together a “cost estimate”, and they are golden. $1.4 Trillion sounds like a reasonable number.

[rigelkentaurus]

this is a small, tiny, irrelevant, narrow ruling, which will be dully noted and ignored.

[x_plus_one]

Too little too late. No power company will restart, reopen or plan new ventures due to one flimsy supreme court ruling. obama ignores the rule of law and everyone knows it.

[Dilbert San Diego]

We are just one (or 2) justices away from leftist destruction. The next president will make this go one way or the other for many years.

---

I know we have had some disappointments from Republican appointed justices such as Roberts and Kennedy.

But, over the next four or eight years that the next president will be in office, there will be a number of Supreme Court vacancies.

Among the retirees will be Breyer, Bader-Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Scalia. These four are all getting up there in years, and virtually certain to retire in the next president’s term. Quite possibly they will retire in the first four years of whoever is elected president in 2016.

There are many other issues to consider in voting, but, given that the courts have devolved into a super legislature, and there appears to be no political will to do anything about this, it matters more than ever who is sitting in the Oval Office making these court appointments.

[SoFloFreeper]

Like Obama gives a damn.

[KC_Conspirator]

Is it the same goose stepping 4 justices all the time?

[Uncle Miltie]

“Law” is whatever 0bama says it is, and nobody will stop him.

We have a dictatorship.

Enjoy.

[zeugma]

From the decision:

Held: EPA interpreted §7412(n)(1)(A) unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants. Pp. 5–15.

(a) Agency action is unlawful if it does not rest “ ‘on a consideration of the relevant factors.’ ” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States,
Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 43. Even under the deferential standard of Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, which directs courts to accept an agency’s reasonable resolution of an ambiguity in a statute that the agency administers, id., at 842–843, EPA strayed well beyond the bounds of reasonable interpretation in concluding that cost is not a factor relevant to the appropriateness of regulating power plants. Pp. 5–6.

(b) “Appropriate and necessary” is a capacious phrase. Read naturally against the backdrop of established administrative law, this phrase plainly encompasses cost. It is not rational, never mind “appropriate,” to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits. Statutory context supports this reading. Section 7412(n)(1) required the EPA to conduct three studies, including one that reflects concern about cost, see §7412(n)(1)(B); and the Agency agrees that the term “appropriate and necessary” must be interpreted in light of all three studies. Pp. 6–9.


(c) EPA’s counterarguments are unpersuasive. That other Clean Air Act provisions expressly mention cost only shows that §7412(n)(1)(A)’s broad reference to appropriateness encompasses multiple relevant factors, one of which is cost. Similarly, the modest principle of Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S.  457—when the Clean Air Act expressly directs EPA to regulate on the basis of a discrete factor that does not include cost, the Act should not be read as implicitly allowing consideration of cost anyway—has no bearing on this case. Furthermore, the possibility of considering cost at a later stage, when deciding how much to regulate power plants, does not establish its irrelevance at this stage. And although the Clean Air Act makes cost irrelevant to the initial decision to regulate sources other than power plants, the whole point of having a separate provision for power plants was to treat power plants differently. Pp. 9–12.


(d) EPA must consider cost—including cost of compliance—before deciding whether regulation is appropriate and necessary. It will be up to the Agency to decide (as always, within the limits of reasonable interpretation) how to account for cost. Pp. 12–15.

748 F. 3d 1222, reversed and remanded.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined. T HOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. KAGAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, B REYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined.
 

[JenB987]

Well, 1 out of 3 ain’t bad...

[sasquatch]

They’ll get the CBO to change the numbers, then Roberts will trowel it into concrete.

[ForAmerica]

Those hacks in the media won’t say anything about this!

[FreedomNotSafety]

Power companies, despite their pandering protests, love these mandates. Since they are a government controlled monopoly they are guaranteed a “reseanable” return on their investment. Every government diktat from any level is a way of raising costs that results in a return on a larger base.

[tbw2]

You’re right, crazy or creative accounting by government bureaucrats who consider a reduction in the rate of growth a cut essentially gets around this ruling.

[dforest]

This decision will be ignored. The damage is already done.

This lawless and corrupt regime only calls judgments in their favor as “the law of the land”.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Yes. The four Demonrat appointees are robots. You can predict ahead of time what their votes are going to be. Not a dime’s worth of difference between them, other than what they look like.

And that’s the reason they are there in the first place. Another example of “affirmative action” at its worst.

[sheikdetailfeather]

YES..

[tcrlaf]

“Not all power plants are Big Business. Many are owed by small companies and those are the ones going bankrupt from excessive regulations because they can’t complete with the large corporations.

But who loses as well are the consumers. More regulations = higher costs passed on to us.”

EXAMPLE:
Richmond Power and Light of Richmond, Indiana.
Two small coal burners, and CHEAP electric rates, in a town crushed in the seventies, early 80’s when all of the small plants started heading for Mexico and Asia.

These regs forced the City to shut down the Utility that had kept electric rates LOW, because they decided that not only would updating to the new, illegal standard be too expensive for the town, but it would NEVER pay for itself, due to the higher rates they would have to charge.

Result.
Good-paying jobs destroyed at the power plant. Jobs destroyed at the Utility-owned Railroad that brought them coal. An empty eyesore sitting idol south of the town.

And doubled electricity rates as the town switched to buying power directly from the Grid, instead of producing it on their own.