Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the liberals in dissent, gets to the core of what the conservative majority’s dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency’s power is really about: its animosity towards agency power in general, and desire to shift that power to itself.
A rogue Supreme Court that is making rulings that are clearly politically based, with “because I said so” logic, that will result in unnecessary suffering and death of a real number Americans. Screw them.
What a disgrace to the Supreme Court legitimacy and for our country.
I’m getting the sense that this SCOTUS in their recent decisions, along with the work of the J6C, is setting the stage for a massive blowout victory for Democrats this November. Roberts and the other Federalists on the bench are making the case that this country simply cannot survive under Republican rule all too clear. We’ve seen their agenda, and it is not what we as Americans want.
I wanted to write that nobody would watch a sport in which the referees were so flagrantly biased. Then I thought of professional wrestling.
SCOTUS is presiding over the WWEffification of the country in more ways than one.
Let’s see if this makes sense. I interpret Justice Kagan’s description of the decision-making process as a conservative court junta that just makes shit up to serve its own prepared agenda.
“The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision maker on climate policy,” she concludes. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
I would include gerrymandering, deciding that it is not the voters who decide elections, gun safety, equal rights for women and minorities. There is so much this Republican and not conservative court is doing that it should scare the hell out of every American who believes in the Constitution.
Except that this same Court is making it so only Republicans without any oversight will decide who wins elections regardless of vote totals.
President Biden needs, in my opinion, to make a speech reviewing the past 25 years of the Supreme Court and how it grossly represents a minority of the country. He should recommend the court be expanded to, I don’t know, 17 justices or so. The emphasis should be on the protection that will provide to all citizens. When a justice dies, it’s not a partisan crisis for example. He should stop short of actually saying he is going to do this. After this speech the right wing media will go nuts but I think most people will understand it makes a lot of sense. When the the initial reaction dies down, then whatever levers available should be used to make it happen. This will also allow history to rub John Roberts nose in the fact he may have had the worst court ever.
This article seems to assume, with Kagan, that hostility to agency power is bad, when reducing agencies’ regulatory powers has been needed for decades. Many of the Federal government’s regulatory agencies and bureaus act as the final arbiter of issues with little or no Congressional oversight. Faceless bureaucrats make far reaching decisions with little or no recourse by the citizenry. EPA, BLM, OSHA, etc. often act as all powerful bodies against helpless citizens who do not have the resources to fight these arbitrary dictators. Thankfully, Ms. Kagan is now, and hopefully will continue to be, in the liberal minority on the Court.
She sorts through the text of the guiding statutes painstakingly, showing that the EPA’s regulation of power plants by enforcing a shift to cleaner energy sources is plainly encapsulated in its written authority.
Kagan doing the hard work to show that, yes, Congress did authorize the EPA to regulate CO2.
Sadly, 15 years ago, the Court understood and ruled exactly that:
The Clean Air Act named six known pollutants, including lead and soot. But it also set up a process called the “endangerment finding” that EPA would use to decide whether additional pollutants should be regulated under the act or adjust its standards for allowable pollution.
“Congress said to the EPA: We want you to be watching the science. You’re supposed to be on guard. When the science shows there’s a danger, then you need to act. Don’t come to us for instructions,” says David Doniger, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.
I expect Kagan and Sotomayor’s dissents of today will become the majority finding in future Court rulings that overturn these abhorrent decisions.
Kagan does indeed believe that hostility to agency power is bad in this case and for specific reasons (namely, that agency power was delegated by Congress).
I don’t see any actual critique of agency power in your analysis here except the usual scaremongering about “faceless” bureaucrats, “helpless” citizens," and “arbitrary dictators.” One could easily choose different adjectives and nouns to describe these actors that would give your paragraph a completely different meaning.
I mean, sometimes citizens feel “helpless” when they deal with “faceless executives” who work at “all powerful corporations” that pollute our environment without consequence. Should we have any regard for those citizens or just the ones who are subject to the imperatives of the Clean Air Act?
As long as Joe Manchin and others continue to be bought and paid for by interests that depend on keeping the EPA out of their business, this will continue. Unless and until we vote in an overwhelming majority in both houses and the WH to enact legislation to right the blatant trashing of our country by a merry little band of religious zealots seated in SCOTUS, we can’t curb their enthusiasm for selfish actions.
Can you give us some specific examples that support your comment?
Obviously, the emancipation proclamation was unconstitutional.
Taking property without compensation!
For some reason, this reminds me of the complaints made by business owners who are required to set up safety protocols to protect their workers from injury, or make sure that cattle grazing by rangers on public land (that we all own) is compensated properly. Or, by industries that are mad they have to clean up their waste instead of dumping it in a river for the government to deal with after the river is set on fire.
The average American is protected in a huge number of ways by the administrative state…it has made our lives better by making sure we aren’t subject to the whim of industry and the wealthy. Those arguing to get rid of it are largely mad about this, they want to take more advantage of Americans and find that the government limits their ability to screw us.
Perhaps. They obviously do not care about their legitimacy.
Maybe they are misunderestimating the politics.
Kagan Calls EPA Decision What It Really Is: Unvarnished Hostility Towards Agency Power
She’s right, but has it a little backward. The hostility toward agency power is just the symptom — the decision reflects the conservative justices’ slavish devotion to their big business/corporate clients, which happens to include trying to undue government oversight/regulation of their activities.
It’s interesting how the Federalists who claim to believe in unhampered executive power are simultaneously hampering the power of executive agencies – the ones the sociopath billionaires that fund them hate.
Here’s some good news: anti-vaxer and COVID wackjob Vladimir Zelenko has died of cancer.
Let’s take a moment to share a thought:
