Supreme Court isn't finished anons.
Upcoming possible 3rd BOOM!
Imagine the liberal climate change tears…
Supreme Court climate case might end regulation
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the coming days or weeks that could curtail EPA’s ability to drive down carbon emissions at power plants.
But it could go much further than that.
Legal experts are waiting to see if the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA begins to chip away at the ability of federal agencies — all of them, not just EPA — to write and enforce regulations. It would foreshadow a power shift with profound consequences, not just for climate policy but virtually everything the executive branch does, from directing air traffic to protecting investors.
The scope of the decision might not be immediately obvious, said Sambhav Sankar, Earthjustice’s senior vice president for programs.
“Everybody is going to be reading tea leaves when it comes out,” he said.
At issue is a petition by coal companies and Republican state attorneys general to bar EPA from writing a rule to require more energy be derived from low-carbon sources like wind, solar and nuclear, and less from coal. They’re targeting the Obama-era Clean Power Plan — a climate rule that was never put into effect and which has been disavowed by EPA Administrator Michael Regan.
That made the high court’s decision last year to take up the case unusual. It might be explained, some legal experts surmise, as an attempt by the court’s expanded conservative majority to say something new about regulation. Maybe the decision will make “systemwide” climate rules on power plants off limits for good — an echo of what has already happened with the Clean Power Plan.
But others say there could be a deeper impact. Indeed, an orbit-altering transformation to regulations.
The most conservative members of the high court might use West Virginia v. EPA as an opportunity to signal — perhaps in a concurring opinion that goes further than the majority opinion — that federal agencies can no longer expect deference from the court when they write rules that expand on the instructions given to them by Congress.
“The broader picture of what may be happening is that the Court is firing a shot across the bow of the regulatory state to say, ‘Stop thinking about new problems or improved solutions to old ones, just think of your job narrowly and imagine yourself back at the time when Congress wrote the enabling statute — even if that was 1970,’” said Sankar, who clerked for Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in 2006.
There are two legal doctrines that get at this broad theme: Because Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives “all legislative powers” to Congress, it must guide regulation while the executive branch’s primary role is to implement and enforce it.
The first is the nondelegation doctrine, which holds that Congress cannot ask federal agencies to write regulations that have the force of law. That’s Congress’ job alone, it asserts…
moar here:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/supreme-court-climate-case-might-end-regulation/