With absolutely smashing wins on abortion and gun control, you might think that this Supreme Court session couldn't get any better than it already has.
But you'd be wrong! We're still waiting on what may end up being a smashing landmark case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency!
Now, I know what you might be saying right about now:
Well, let's let ScotusBlog spell it out for us:
[The case consists of whether], in 42 U.S.C. § 7411(d), an ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act, Congress constitutionally authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to issue significant rules — including those capable of reshaping the nation's electricity grids and unilaterally decarbonizing virtually any sector of the economy — without any limits on what the agency can require so long as it considers cost, nonair impacts and energy requirements.
In laymen's terms, the question is: Can the EPA undertake its own interpretation of federal statute and just kinda do whatever it thinks is right? Or does that authority rest only with Congress?
But of course the issue doesn't stop there. It never does with SCOTUS rulings. After all, if the Court rules that the EPA cannot simply delegate itself authority based on its own interpretation of federal law, it may very well extend to every other agency of the federal government—meaning that federal agencies may very well be hamstrung in their ability to kinda do whatever they want.
It's kinda a big deal!
Here's what UCLA School of Law Prof. Blake Emerson said about it earlier this month:
Right now, we have a case before the court, West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency, that's really about the EPA's authority to address climate change. And essentially, the court is very skeptical that Congress should be able to give administrative bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency authority to make big policy decisions — to decide, "OK, do we want to regulate just specific power plants? Or do we want to regulate the entire electric grid?" And the court thinks that those decisions constitutionally have to be made by Congress because that's where the Constitution placed that power. And that is a fairly revolutionary doctrine.
A "revolutionary doctrine," you say?!
I'll take it! Fingers crossed!
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