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Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in West Virginia vs. EPA, ruling that the Clean Air Act did not specifically authorize the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Now, any greenhouse gas regulations would need specific authorization from Congress. At issue was the Clean Power Plan (CPP), an EPA regulation promulgated by the Obama administration which mandated that existing coal and natural gas power plants reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. There were many problems with this regulation, some of them were legal, and some of them were practical. Legally Speaking.. The...

California Gov. Newsom defiantly vows to double down on California’s climate change policies

In striking down vast new authority that the Obama and Biden administrations had claimed for the Environmental Protection Agency , the Supreme Court stopped the expansion of, but did not roll back, the powers of bureaucracies to self-seize ever-greater power. The decision was a clear but limited victory for those wanting to honor the Constitution’s separation of powers and restrain governmental overreach. At issue, in terms of practical policy, was whether the EPA, when under left-wing political leadership, can force coal plants to choose (essentially) between reducing the amount of energy they produce for public use or spending billions of...

The Supreme Court on Thursday curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, one of the most important environmental decisions in years.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, in a decision that could limit the authority of government agencies to address major policy questions without congressional approval. Elaborating on earlier decisions, the high court said federal agencies need explicit authorization from Congress to decide issues of major economic and political significance, drawing on a principle known as the “major questions doctrine.” In his decision for the 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Congress never gave the EPA the authority to change the methods a power plant uses—regulations known as...

Believe it or not, overturning Roe v. Wade may not be the Supreme Court’s most dramatic decision this year. Instead, its ruling on West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency could prove far more consequential. It could literally upend how our government works. West Virginia vs. the EPA asks whether important policies that impact the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected D.C. bureaucrats or by Congress. This SCOTUS could well decide that ruling by executive agency fiat is no longer acceptable. The case involves the Clean Power Plan, which was adopted under President Barack Obama to fight...

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate power plant emissions, in a case that legal scholars say could undermine Congress’s constitutional authority to delegate power to federal agencies. Some argue that such regulation — not just by the EPA, but in President Biden’s vaccine mandate as well — is unconstitutional because of a somewhat arcane legal doctrine called the “nondelegation doctrine.” This theory holds that Congress cannot delegate broad policymaking authority to government agencies. Why does this argument matter? Our research finds that if the Supreme Court were to...

The White House’s Clean Water Act requires property owners to surrender possession of land that falls under its jurisdiction. The law, which has frustrated landowners for 40 years, was expanded last year when the Obama administration issued new rules for which bodies of water can be claimed as government property. Hawkes Co., Inc. was one of the businesses affected by the White House’s environmental guidelines. The company, which provides peat for golf courses, was prevented from using property in Marshall County, Minnesota, because it had been deemed federally controlled wetlands by the United States Corps of Engineers. The Supreme Court took up...

The Supreme Court has ruled against federal regulators’ attempt to limit power plant emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. The rules began to take effect in April, but the court said by a 5-4 vote Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency failed to take their cost into account when the agency first decided to regulate the toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants.

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...

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” ... It’s one of the cornerstones of our entire legal system, with roots dating back at least as far as the Magna Carta, which declared, “No free man...shall be stripped of his rights or possessions...except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prefers a less venerable form of justice, as the Supreme Court will hear next month during oral arguments in the case...