Supreme Court Hears Effort To Cripple EPA

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Monday morning in West Virginia v. EPA, where red states and coal companies are asking the Court to dramatically limit the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1406828
1 Like

I guess we know how Ginni will vote. I fear there’ll be at least four other votes for the hobbling of common sense.

13 Likes

Just as yet another apocalyptic climate report is released. Science versus greed. Guess the winner.

14 Likes

“Hears Effort” is misleading - the headline should be simplified to “Supreme Court to Cripple EPA”.

Throw all of the hounds the abortion steak to distract them while the real work gets done.

12 Likes

On the upside, it won’t matter once everything is irradiated.

6 Likes

“Supreme Court Hears Effort To Cripple EPA On Climate Change”

Well, this should be rich, right?

Another opportunity for the right wing Injustices to cripple the federal government. Yippee! Yeah, let’s make protection of the environment a state responsibility only! Why, that liberal freedom-stealing EPA was founded by that notorious commie-rat Democrat, Richard Nixon.

Oh, wait.

10 Likes

Oh great the court lives in The 1700s.

8 Likes

Congress: Passes law prohibiting use of fossil fuels.

SCOTUS: Fossil fuel consumption protected by substantive Due Process.

16 Likes

I guess the Justices with children (because if you don’t, then who cares, right?) figure they’ll simply buy their way out of climate catastrophes and polluted air and water. But what about the help?

4 Likes

But not my right to breath.

3 Likes

The EPA was gutted during Trump, so it has taken time just to find their feet again. A good example is PFAS "forever chemical rules. The PFAS rules in the US are just getting finalized, while the EU has already got a ban on 200 PFAS chemicals in 2023. You would think Gorsuch would be happy with this state of affairs and consider this mother’s snub as EPA head revenged. Apparently not.

4 Likes

This is the endgame for the “dark money” powers. They want to eliminate government regulation completely. That would lead to very, very bad things.

ETA; This “major questions” issue is complete and utter bullshit because 1) the EPA is not going to enforce the Clean Power Act and 2) Congress does not have to ok every single action by a federal agency. They delegate such powers to said agencies because replacing regulators with legislators is madness. This is Brother Koch and his allies trying to eliminate government regulation in its entirety. He can’t be allowed to win this one.

8 Likes

The United States Constitution does not protect any right to noun.

10 Likes

‘promote the general welfare’ is nothing more than constitutional argle-bargle in the eyes of the wingnuts. And wingnut ideology is very important to our current scotus.

4 Likes

It’s worse than that; some of the justices believe they can read the minds of men who died 200+ years ago and determine their “original intent” from broadly-written and purposely ambiguous phrases in the Constitution.

7 Likes

A politicized court will render a politicized verdict. It’s really quite that simple.

12 Likes

If the Supreme Court prevents the EPA from regulating coal plants, Biden should have the military bomb them. It is better than doing nothing, and his power of the military is unrestrained. I’m only half kidding here. Climate change is more important than anything else.

2 Likes

The good thing is I live in TX with a prevailing wind from the south. The bad thing is I live north of Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas.

1 Like

The distinguished ladies on the court have to educate the lawyers from WV and their beer guzzling colleague. Traitor Thomas is beyond reach.

6 Likes

Original intent is a thing for just about everybody when it comes to constitutional and statutory interpretation. To the extent there is any principled disagreement – and I have largely abandoned the notion that there is any principled disagreement – it comes down to whether the words were intended to capture anything that those enacting them might not have considered at the time.

And in general, I think it’s fairly obvious that more specific language means more specific requirements, while more general language (i.e., Due Process and Equal Protection) were plainly intended to be flexible and open-ended.

13 Likes