The major decision coming out of the Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. This cuts back on what has been the unlimited authority Joe Biden and a past president Barack Obama have assumed or allowed their agencies to assume.
They have used agency rules as part of their toolbox to grab power.
The decision will hopefully limit the authority of government agencies to address major policy questions without congressional approval.
Congress has ceded its authority to agencies over and over.
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 “generation shifting” requirements.
Chief Justice Roberts said that forcing a nationwide transition away from coal might be a sensible idea. But the EPA cannot do so without a clear authority from Congress.
“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” the chief justice wrote. He said the “EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute.”
An EPA spokesman said the agency is reviewing the decision and is “committed to using the full scope of its existing authorities to protect public health and significantly reduce environmental pollution, which is in alignment with the growing clean energy economy.”
That’s what the Left does. When they lose a case, they reword it, get their way anyway, get sued, lose, and change the wording again.
The chief justice’s opinion was joined by the court’s conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion that was joined by Justice Alito.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent on behalf of herself, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer, whose retirement becomes effective Thursday.
Justice Kagan dishonestly wrote that the Court was appointing itself in charge of climate policy.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, hailed the ruling as significant.
“Today, the Supreme Court has taken a major step to restore representative government and require legislators, not bureaucrats, to make the major policy decisions affecting the lives of Americans,” said the group’s executive vice president, Derrick Morgan.
The decision is a warning to regulatory agencies that they should be wary of interpreting old laws to give them broad new powers, said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
“Finding dormant regulatory authority in pre-existing statutes is something the court disfavors,” Mr. Adler said.
All the Court did was return Congress’s rightful authorities. Whether Congress will ignore them and let unelected bureaucrats in agencies make these decisions is to be determined.
Fascist Democrats want all the power in the presidency and the executive agencies.
Meanwhile, radical environmentalists want us off fossil fuels immediately, risking our national security and our ability to keep our families safe.
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