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The Supreme Court will likely scrap the Chevron doctrine, which empowers federal agencies.
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The ruling could make it easier for courts to block President Joe Biden’s climate policies.
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Business and conservative groups argue that the Chevron doctrine leads to federal overreach.
Climate advocates and business groups are closely watching the US Supreme Court this week.
The court could issue a ruling that drastically restricts the federal government’s power to regulate the environment, including President Joe Biden’s Climate Policies.
The case involves a group of commercial fishermen who objected to fees they had to pay to have federal observers aboard their vessels to prevent overfishing. But at the center are 40 decades of legal precedent known as the Chevron doctrine, which have shaped the role of federal agencies.
Business and conservative groups argue that the doctrine allows federal bureaucrats to overstep their authority on issues related not just to the environment, but to broad sectors of the economy. The lawyers representing the commercial fisherman are from the Cause of Action Institute, a nonprofit group that is part of the libertarian network built by Charles Koch, the petrochemical billionaire who has advocated deregulation.
Environmental groups fear that repealing the Chevron doctrine will make it easier for courts to block regulations, especially those from the Biden administration aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.
Here’s what you should know:
What is the Chevron doctrine?
Congress writes the laws and federal agencies write the rules to implement them. But Congress is not always clear and does not regularly update old laws to reflect scientific or technological advances.
The Chevron doctrine holds that when the law is ambiguous, courts must defer to the federal agency’s interpretation as long as it is reasonable. These agencies are often staffed by people with technical and scientific knowledge that judges do not have.
This precedent arises a 1984 court case about air pollution rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan. The decision was actually a defeat for environmentalists; The Natural Resources Defense Council sought a more comprehensive definition of pollutants at large industrial plants like Chevron’s, but lost.
“The doctrine was neutral,” said David Doniger, a senior NRDC attorney who argued the original Chevron case on the group’s behalf. “This originally came about in an effort by the Reagan administration to weaken the Clean Air Act.”
Doniger said that since then, Chevron’s opinion has been cited more than 15,000 times by courts across the country. But he added that as the Obama and Biden administrations push for stronger environmental policies, business groups and conservatives have come to view Chevron as “systematically enabling the government to do more.”
Where are the judges?
Legal experts say the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, is likely to overturn or significantly limit the Chevron doctrine.
Judge Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, said at oral arguments in January that Chevron was problematic for small businesses and individuals with little power to influence federal agencies.
But Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, argued that health, safety and environmental regulations that protect the public could be struck down if Chevron were toppled.
What could be affected?
Doniger said that while controlling Chevron could make it easier to win cases aimed at reversing Biden’s climate policies, it is difficult to make predictions without knowing the scope of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The EPA over the past year has established stricter limits on car emissionstrucks, power plants and oil and gas infrastructure, as well as about toxic chemicals in tap water — all of them targets of lawsuits from Republican-led states, the fossil fuel industry or other companies.
“Attorneys will try to characterize these rules as an extension of EPA authority,” Doniger said.
Meanwhile, he added, administrative lawyers have been preparing for this same scenario in the Federal Supreme Court. Biden’s EPA did not rely on the Chevron doctrine to defend its climate rules.
This is a departure from the Obama years, when the EPA cited the Chevron doctrine in its attempt to set the first limits on carbon emissions from power plants. Long legal battles ensued and the Trump administration ended up shelving the plan.
Read the original article at Business Insider
