In a two-part decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled both against and for the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the case of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. In one decision, the Court ruled that the EPA cannot circumvent the legislative process by unilaterally extending its authority without any congressional action.

The court's 7-2 decision gave the EPA most of what it wanted. But in a separate 5-4 vote, the justices rejected the agency's broad assertion of regulatory power under one section of the Clean Air Act.

Alaska Attorney General Michael Geraghty today praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempt to rewrite the Clean Air Act to claim regulatory authority over millions of small businesses. An attempt, said Geraghty, by the EPA to overstep its statutory authority in regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions without any congressional action.

“How we as a nation deal with the global threat posed by GHG is a matter for our elected representatives,” Attorney General Geraghty said. “This case reaffirms the important principle that regulatory agencies like the EPA are not authorized to rewrite laws like the Clean Air Act to suit their purposes.”

The State of Alaska had joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau Federation in filing one of the six petitions for review that were ultimately granted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court’s decision agrees with many of the points the State argued – in particular that the EPA cannot rewrite the statute through regulation.

The Supreme Court held that EPA acted unlawfully in rewriting the Clean Air Act to claim regulatory authority over millions of small entities based solely on GHG emissions. Under EPA’s so-called “Tailoring Rule,” “EPA asserts newfound authority to regulate millions of small sources - including retail stores, offices, apartment buildings, shopping centers, schools and churches - and to decide, on an ongoing basis and without regard for the thresholds prescribed by Congress, how many of those sources to regulate.” The decision, issued Monday in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, is a clear rebuke of EPA “laying claim to extravagant statutory power over the national economy.”

According to the Alaska Department of Law, in rejecting EPA’s interpretation of the law, the court said “it would be patently unreasonable – not to say outrageous - for EPA to insist on seizing expansive power that it admits the statute is not designed to grant.” The court also observed that it was not “willing to stand on the dock and wave goodbye as EPA embarks on this multiyear voyage of discovery.”

Another question the Court had to deal with in this case was how the EPA could deal with "anyway" sources—that is, entities that are the source of greenhouse gas emissions that are already required to obtain permits because of their emission of another pollutant.

According to the majority, the EPA is permitted to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of these polluters. As Justice Scalia noted in both the text of the opinion and when he summarized his opinion from the bench, according to the solicitor general's brief "roughly 83% of American stationary-source greenhouse-gas emissions" come from these sources "anyway," So the opinion preserves the EPA's authority to regulate most of the stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Background:

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, if it determined that these emissions endangered public health. The court's 2007 decision declaring that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars, trucks and other mobile sources under the Clean Air Act.

Following that, in 2010, the EPA introduced a new set of regulations designed to control carbon dioxide emissions from light and heavy vehicles as well as generators and industrial and utility sources. A coalition of power companies challenged the legality of the regulations, arguing that the science used by the EPA in deciding the regulations was inaccurate.

In 2012, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit court unanimously rejected the challenges. In 2013, the case was accepted for review by the United States Supreme Court with a ruling handed down on June 23, 2014.

On the Web:

UTILITY AIR REGULATORY GROUP v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.
Argued February 24, 2014—Decided June 23, 2014
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-1146_4g18.pdf

Opinion analysis: EPA mostly wins, but with criticism - SCOTUS Blog
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/06/opinion-analysis-epa-mostly-wins-but-with-criticism/

Source of News: 

Alaska Department of Law
www.law.state.ak.us

UTILITY AIR REGULATORY GROUP v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.
Argued February 24, 2014—Decided June 23, 2014
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-1146_4g18.pdf

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Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska

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