Court limits EPA in curbing power plant emissions
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a blow to the fight against climate change, the Supreme Court on Thursday limited how the nation's main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
By a 6-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority, the court said that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.
The decision, said environmental advocates and dissenting liberal justices, was a major step in the wrong direction — "a gut punch," one prominent meteorologist said — at a time of increasing environmental damage attributable to climate change amid dire warnings about the future.
The court's ruling could complicate the administration's plans to combat climate change. Its detailed proposal to regulate power plant emissions is expected by the end of the year. Though the decision was specific to the EPA, it was in line with the conservative majority's skepticism of the power of regulatory agencies and it sent a message on possible future effects beyond climate change and air pollution.
The decision put an exclamation point on a court term in which a conservative majority, bolstered by three appointees of former President Donald Trump, also overturned the nearly 50-year-old nationwide right to abortion, expanded gun rights and issued major religious rights rulings, all over liberal dissents.
President Joe Biden aims to cut the nation's greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade and to have an emissions-free power sector by 2035. Power plants account for roughly 30% of carbon dioxide output.
"Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible 'solution to the crisis of the day,'" Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion for the court.
But Roberts wrote that the Clean Air Act doesn't give EPA the authority to do so and that Congress must speak clearly on this subject.
"A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body," he wrote.
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision strips the EPA of the power Congress gave it to respond to "the most pressing environmental challenge of our time."
Kagan said the stakes in the case are high. She said, "The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening."
Biden, in a statement, called the ruling "another devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards." He said he would "not relent in using my lawful authorities to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis."
And EPA head Michael Regan said his agency will move forward with a rule to impose environmental standards on the energy sector.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who led the legal challenge to EPA authority, said the "EPA can no longer sidestep Congress to exercise broad regulatory power that would radically transform the nation's energy grid and force states to fundamentally shift their energy portfolios away from coal-fired generation."
But University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, a past president of the American Meteorological Society, said of the decision: "It feels like a gut punch to critical efforts to combat the climate crisis which has the potential to place lives at risk for decades to come."
Richard Revesz, an environmental expert at the New York University School of Law, called the decision "a significant setback for environmental protection and public health safeguards."
But he also said in a statement that EPA still has authority to address greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector.
EPA Administrator Regan said the agency "will move forward with lawfully setting and implementing environmental standards that meet our obligation to protect all people and all communities from environmental harm."
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the consequences of Thursday's decision "will ripple across the entire federal government, from the regulation of food and drugs to our nation's health care system, all of which will put American lives at risk."
The court held that Congress must speak with specificity when it wants to give an agency authority to regulate on an issue of major national significance.
Several conservative justices have criticized what they see as the unchecked power of federal agencies.
Those concerns were evident in the court's orders throwing out two Biden administration policies aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19. Last summer, the court's 6-3 conservative majority ended a pause on evictions over unpaid rent. In January, the same six justices blocked a requirement that workers at large employers be vaccinated or test regularly and wear a mask on the job.
Underlying all these issues is a lack of action from Congress, reflecting bitter, partisan disagreements over the role of the federal government.
On the environment, Biden's signature plan to address climate, a sweeping social and environmental policy bill known as Build Back Better, is all but dead amid united opposition from congressional Republicans and conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin from coal state West Virginia.
Under a trimmed down version, the legislation backed by Democrats would offer tax credits and spending to boost renewable power such as wind and solar and sharply increase the number of electric vehicles.
The justices heard arguments in the case on the same day that a United Nations panel's report warned that the effects of climate change are about to get much worse, likely making the world sicker, hungrier, poorer and more dangerous in the coming years.
The power plant case has a long and complicated history that begins with the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. That plan would have required states to reduce emissions from the generation of electricity, mainly by shifting away from coal-fired plants.
But that plan never took effect. Acting in a lawsuit filed by West Virginia and others, the Supreme Court blocked it in 2016 by a 5-4 vote, with conservatives in the majority.
With the plan on hold, the legal fight over it continued. But after President Donald Trump took office, the EPA repealed the Obama-era plan. The agency under Trump argued that its authority to reduce carbon emissions was limited, and it devised a new plan that sharply reduced the federal government's role in the issue.
New York, 21 other mainly Democratic states, the District of Columbia and some of the nation's largest cities sued over the Trump plan. The federal appeals court in Washington ruled against both the repeal and the new plan, and its decision left nothing in effect while the new administration drafted a new policy.
Adding to the unusual nature of the high court's involvement, the reductions sought in the Obama plan by 2030 already have been achieved through the market-driven closure of hundreds of coal plants.
Nineteen mostly Republican-led states and coal companies led the fight at the Supreme Court against broad EPA authority to regulate carbon output.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Seth Borenstein and Cathy Bussewitz in New York contributed to this report.
Justices say administration can end asylum policy
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Thursday the Biden administration can scrap a Trump-era immigration policy that was at the center of efforts to deter asylum-seekers, forcing some to wait in Mexico. Two conservative justices joined their three liberal colleagues in siding with the White House.
The justices' decision came in a case involving former President Donald Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy, formally know as Migrant Protection Protocols, which enrolled about 70,000 people after it was launched in 2019.
President Joe Biden suspended the program on his first day in office in January 2021. But lower courts ordered it reinstated in response to a lawsuit from Republican-led Texas and Missouri. The current administration has sent far fewer people back to Mexico than did the Trump administration.
The ruling was released on the same day that the court dealt the administration a blow in an important environmental case about the nation's main anti-air pollution law. That ruling could complicate the administration's plans to combat climate change.
The heart of the legal fight in the immigration case was about whether U.S. immigration authorities, with far less detention capacity than needed, had to send people to Mexico or whether those authorities had the discretion under federal law to release asylum-seekers into the United States while they awaited their hearings.
After Biden's suspension of the program, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended it in June 2021. In October, the department produced additional justifications for the policy's demise, but that was to no avail in the courts.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that an appeals court "erred in holding that the" federal Immigration and Nationality Act "required the Government to continue implementing MPP." Joining the majority opinion was fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump-appointee, as well as liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Kavanaugh also wrote separately and noted that in general, when there is insufficient detention capacity, both releasing asylum-seekers into the United States and sending them back to Mexico "are legally permissible options under the immigration statutes."
Cornell University law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration expert, said the Biden administration does not need to take any further action to end the policy, but that Texas and Missouri can pursue a challenge over whether the administration followed appropriate procedure in ending the program.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that the decision was "unfortunate." He argued it would make "the border crisis worse. But it's not the end. I'll keep pressing forward and focus on securing the border and keeping our communities safe in the dozen other immigration suits I'm litigating in court."
Because of lower court decisions MPP resumed in December, but the administration has registered only 7,259 migrants in the program, about 6 of every 10 of them Nicaraguans. The administration has said it would apply the policy to nationalities that are less likely to be subject to pandemic-era asylum limits. Strained diplomatic relations with Nicaragua makes it extremely difficult for the U.S. to expel people back to their homeland under the pandemic rule, known as Title 42 authority.
U.S. authorities stopped migrants 1.2 million times on the Mexico border from December through May, illustrating the limited impact that "Remain in Mexico" has had under Biden.
Democratic-led states and progressive groups were on the administration's side in the case. Republican-run states and conservative groups sided with Texas and Missouri.
The case is Biden v. Texas, 21-954.
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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Alan Fram contributed to this report.
Court rejects COVID-19 shot mandate case from New York
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court declined on Thursday to take up a case involving a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care workers in New York that does not offer an exemption for religious reasons.
The court's action follows a decision in December in which the justices declined an emergency request to halt the requirement. At the time, doctors, nurses and other medical workers who said they were being forced to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.
Three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented earlier and did so again Thursday.
New York is one of three states, along with Maine and Rhode Island, that do not accommodate health care workers who object to the vaccine on religious grounds.
The court had previously turned away health care workers in Maine, who filed a similar challenge, with the same three justices in dissent.
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