The historic US Supreme Court ruling that limits Biden’s powers to combat climate change

The United States Environmental Protection Agency USA (EPA for its acronym in English) lost part of its powers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The historic failure of United States Supreme Court represents a major setback for the president’s climate plans Joe Biden.

The president described it as a “devastating decision”, but said the ruling would not undermine his effort to tackle the climate crisis.

The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf of 18 other states. largely led by Republicans and some of the largest coal companies in the country.

The plaintiffs argued that the EPA did not have the authority to limit emissions in all states.

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These 19 states are concerned about the economic impact of their energy sectors being forced to transition away from coal.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court sided with conservative states and fossil fuel companies and agreed that the EPA did not have the authority to impose such extensive measures.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri, one of 19 plaintiff states, described the court’s decision as a “major victory … rolling back Biden’s job-killing EPA regulations.”

The court did not completely prevent the EPA from making these regulations in the future, but says Congress would have to say clearly that it authorizes this power.

Y Congress has previously rejected the EPA’s proposed carbon capping programs.

Environmental groups are deeply concerned about the outcome, as the 19 states that brought the case have made little progress in reducing their emissions, something needed to limit the impact of climate change.

The plaintiff states accounted for 44% of US emissions in 2018, and since 2000 they have only achieved a 7% reduction in their emissions on average.

“The Supreme Court ruling undermines EPA’s authority to protect people from climate pollution at a time when all the evidence shows that we must take action with great urgency”, said Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an NGO based in New York.

Biden called the ruling a "devastating decision".

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significant loss

The ruling means that President Biden can now only hope for a policy change in all 19 states or a turnaround in Congress; on the contrary, the US is unlikely to meet its climate goals.

This is a significant loss for the president, who took office with the promise of increasing US efforts on the environment and climate.

On his first day in office, Biden re-entered his country into the Paris Agreement, the first legally binding global agreement on climate change goals.

Y committed the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 52% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.

“While this decision risks damaging our nation’s ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, I will continue to use my legal authority to protect public health and address the climate crisis,” Biden said. .

Governments around the world will surely take notice of the Supreme Court ruling as it will affect global efforts to tackle climate change. The United States accounts for nearly 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions..

A United Nations spokesman called the Supreme Court decision “a setback in our fight against climate change,” but added that no single nation could derail the global effort.

In the US, this decision could also affect the EPA’s broader current and future regulatory responsibilities, including those related to consumer protections, workplace safety, and public health.

The ruling gives “enormous power” to the courts to weaken other regulations that it does not likeHajin Kim, a law professor at the University of Chicago, told the BBC.

This is because judges can argue that Congress did not explicitly authorize the agency to do something in particular, he added.

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The impact on regulatory powers will be significant

Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter

For decades, the Supreme Court has held that judges should generally delegate to government agencies the interpretation of federal law.

On Thursday, the Conservative majority continued a recent trend of doing away with that practice.

The justices of the Supreme Court adopted the so-called “leading questions doctrine” (major questions doctrine), which states that Congress cannot delegate authority to administrative agencies for “questions of great political or economic importance”, which involve broad regulatory actions.

If Congress had intended the EPA to be able to issue sweeping regulations of an entire sector of the American economy, the justices said, it would have explicitly included that power in the Clean Air Act (Clean Air Act).

In January, a similar majority of the court cited the leading questions doctrine to overturn an attempt by the Biden administration to use a federal workplace law to require vaccination of employees of large companies.

It is now clear that this court will be skeptical of the agency’s attempts to cite vague or broad laws to enact major regulatory changes.

This is somewhat significant, given how difficult it has been for Congress to pass substantive new legislation in recent years..

The time when presidents could findalternative solutions” unilateral under existing laws may be coming to an end.

Source: Elcomercio