Posted on February 11, 2016 by Andrea Field
I am a terrible predictor of what cases the Supreme Court will hear and what the Court will decide on those matters it chooses to hear. For example, I wrongly predicted that the Supreme Court would never consider reviewing the D.C. Circuit’s decisions in cases involving other recent EPA regulations, but the Supreme Court chose to hear those cases, which led to its decisions in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA and Michigan v. EPA. And if asked to guess whether the Court would issue a stay of EPA’s Clean Power Plan under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, I might well have said that the odds were greatly against that happening – despite the merits of the arguments being raised by those seeking the stay.
Perhaps, though, my poor predictive abilities are the result of my looking at each case in isolation instead of looking at them in combination and considering whether the Supreme Court’s February 9, 2016 stay decision is an outgrowth of the combined knowledge gained by the Court in its recent reviews of those other Clean Air Act cases. Specifically, as pointed out by State Petitioners in their briefs in support of a stay of the Clean Power Plan (see here and here,) EPA has touted its Plan as being one that will completely transform the way energy is created and delivered in this country even though – argued State Petitioners – the plain statutory language (of Clean Air Act section 111(d)) does not authorize such Agency action, and the approach of the Clean Power Plan is at odds with EPA’s 45-year history of implementing section 111(d). Maybe such claims struck a chord with the Court, which – in UARG – told EPA that the Agency cannot make “decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance’” under a long-extant statute, like the Clean Air Act, without “clear congressional authorization.”
And then there was Michigan, where the Court determined that EPA had proceeded unlawfully in adopting another extensive and expensive Clean Air Act regulatory program. State Petitioners in the Clean Power Plan litigation made sure that the Court was aware that by the time the Court issued its decision in Michigan – a case where the underlying rule was not stayed during the pendency of litigation – the affected parties had spent billions of dollars to meet the terms of the underlying, un-stayed rule. In other words, justice delayed in Michigan was justice denied.
None of this is to say what the Court will or will not do if and when it reviews arguments on the lawfulness of the Clean Power Plan. I make no predictions on that. But I believe the Court acted appropriately in calling for the completion of litigation before requiring affected parties to make the massive, unprecedented, costly, and transformative changes to the energy industry that the Clean Power Plan demands.
Tags: Clean Power Plan, CPP
Air | Climate Change | Energy | Environmental Protection Agency | Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) | Supreme Court