Supreme Court Decision Forces EPA to Reconsider Greenhouse Gas Regulation
WASHINGTON D.C., April 2 -- In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions.
The court further ruled that the agency cannot sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it can provide a scientific basis for its refusal.
The 5-to-4 decision was a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, which has maintained that it does not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and even if it did, it would not use the authority. The ruling does not force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate auto emissions, but it would almost certainly face further legal action if it fails to do so.
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said that the only way the agency can “avoid taking further action� now is “if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change� or provides a good explanation why it cannot or will not find out whether they do.Beyond the specific context for this case — so-called “tailpipe emissions� from cars and trucks, which account for about one-fourth of the country’s total greenhouse-gas emissions — the decision is highly likely to have a broader impact on the debate over government efforts to address global warming.
Court cases around the country had been placed on hold to await the decision in this case. Among them is a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, now pending in the federal appeals court here. Individual states, led by California, are also moving aggressively into what they have seen as a regulatory vacuum.
Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, said that by providing nothing more than a “laundry list of reasons not to regulate,� the Environmental Protection Agency had defied the Clean Air Act’s “clear statutory command.� He said that a refusal to regulate can be based only on science and “reasoned justification,� adding that while the statute leaves the central determination to the “judgment� of the agency’s administrator, “the use of the word ‘judgment’ is not a roving license to ignore the statutory text.�
The court decided a second Clean Air Act case today, adopting a broad reading of the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over factories and power plants that add capacity or make renovations that increase emissions of air pollutants. In doing so, the court reopened a federal enforcement effort against the Duke Energy Corporation under the Clean Air Act’s “new source review� provision. The vote in the second case, Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp., No. 05-848, was 9 to 0.
The two decisions left environmental advocates exultant. Many said they still harbored doubts about the federal agency and predicted that the decision would help push the Democratic-controlled Congress to address the issue. Even in the nine months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, and accelerating since the elections last November, there has been a growing interest among industry groups in working with environmental organizations on proposals for emissions limits.
Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the main industry trade group, said in response to the E.P.A. decision that the alliance “looks forward to working constructively with both Congress and the administration� in addressing the issue. “This decision says that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be part of this process,� he said.
If the decision sowed widespread claims of victory, it left behind a prominent loser: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who argued vigorously in a dissenting opinion that the court never should have reached the merits of the case or addressed the question of the agency’s legal obligations.
His dissent, which Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. also signed, focused solely on the issue of legal standing to sue: whether the broad coalition of states, cities and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency four years ago should have been accepted as plaintiffs in the first place.
This was the issue on which the coalition’s lawsuit had appeared most vulnerable, given that in recent years the Supreme Court has steadily raised the barrier to standing, especially in environmental cases. Justice Scalia has long been a leader in that effort, and Chief Justice Roberts made clear that, as his statements and actions in his prejudicial career indicated, he is fully on board Justice Scalia’s project.
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Justices Rule Against Bush Administration on Emissions
