The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on Thursday to severely limit the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to combat greenhouse gas emissions is devastating at a time when climate change endangers the planet.
The decision also poses a broad and serious threat to the power of federal agencies to adopt regulations to protect public health and safety in other fields. By this ruling, the court’s conservatives have opened the door to challenges to countless regulations that apply to other industries.
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, applied the “major questions doctrine” (a legal analysis used to determine if a federal agency has exceeded its authority) in a way that would strike down any regulation that has significant effects on the economy unless the government agency can “point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for the power it claims.” This interpretation of the doctrine would give businesses a new way to attack other sensible regulations, even if they have been in place for years.
