Analysis: The Supreme Court's EPA ruling was the beginning of something bigger

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Analysis: The Supreme Court’s EPA ruling was the beginning of something bigger

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Analysis | The Supreme Court's EPA ruling was the beginning of something bigger
Republican attorneys general and conservative legal activists are plotting ways to challenge other environmental regulations on similar grounds, setting up a larger legal showdown over the federal...

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THE CLIMATE 202

The Supreme Court's EPA ruling was the beginning of something bigger

Analysis by Maxine Joselow
with research by Vanessa Montalbano

July 6, 2022 at 8:14 a.m. EDT

When the Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency's power to combat climate change last week, Republican attorneys general and conservative legal activists cheered the ruling.

In particular, they celebrated the court's embrace of the “major questions doctrine,” a conservative legal idea that says federal agencies need explicit authorization from Congress to decide issues of “major economic and political significance.”

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The ‘anti-regulatory arsenal’

The major questions doctrine is relatively new. But in the past year, the Supreme Court's conservative majority has invoked the idea to strike down a national moratorium on evictions imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Biden administration's vaccination-or-testing requirement for the nation’s largest employers.

In the majority opinion in West Virginia v. EPA last week, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority” to make sweeping changes to the nation's power sector. ... “The major questions doctrine didn't exist until fairly recently, but in the last year or so, the Supreme Court has made it a regular part of its anti-regulatory arsenal,” Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, told The Climate 202. ... “As a result, I am sure that enterprising attorneys general for red states will use it to challenge climate regulations, environmental regulations and all kinds of other regulations,” Revesz said.

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By Maxine Joselow
Maxine Joselow is a staff writer who anchors The Climate 202 at The Washington Post. Sign up here. Twitter https://twitter.com/maxinejoselow

By Vanessa Montalbano
Vanessa Montalbano is a researcher for The Climate 202, a daily morning newsletter at The Washington Post that keeps readers up to date on climate news and policy. Twitter https://twitter.com/vanessamontzz