Yves here. Because so much has happened in the last week, between the Biden legitimacy crisis triggered by his poor debate performance, a series of major Supreme Court rulings, and the Ukraine and Israel conflicts (and related jousting), we are behind in drilling into one of these critically importing Supreme Court ruling, the Chevron decision. The article below gives a flavor of how it vitiates a great deal of regulatory authority, and specifically increases the difficulty of limiting greenhouse gas output.
By Charles Price, a writer at OilPrice. Originally published at OilPrice
- Biden’s strict tailpipe emissions standard has become vulnerable due to the Supreme Court decision on the Chevron Deference.
- The ruling adds to already heated debates about whether the EPA has authority to regulate emissions from vehicles.
- The U.S. top court ruling will have wide-reaching implications for the oil and gas industry because it will make it more difficult for federal agencies to regulate the environment and public health.
The Biden Administration’s new strict tailpipe emission standards have just become particularly vulnerable after the Supreme Court overturned last week a 40-year-old landmark ruling, known as the ‘Chevron deference’, which granted federal agencies the authority to interpret ambiguous laws.
The precedent, set in 1984 in a case involving the oil giant, gave federal agencies more power to interpret ambiguous laws. But last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling will strip federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from the power of interpreting laws, such as the Clean Air Act, and how to apply them.
The U.S. top court ruling will have wide-reaching implications for the oil and gas industry because it will make it more difficult for federal agencies to regulate the environment and public health, based on their interpretation of ambiguous laws.
The tailpipe emissions limits, which the EPA finalized just a few weeks ago, look especially vulnerable in light of the Supreme Court ruling, environmental law attorneys have told Reuters.
In March, the EPA announced the finalization of new tailpipe emission standards. The agency boasted that these were the strictest standards ever, adding that they would save money, create jobs, and eliminate billions of tons of CO2 emissions.
The ruling adds to already heated debates about whether the EPA has authority to regulate emissions from vehicles, they said.
“There have been longstanding debates about whether and to what extent the (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has the authority to regulate emissions from mobile sources,” Sherry Jackman, an environmental litigator and compliance counselor at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles, told Reuters.
Even before the Supreme Court ruling last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) challenged the new tailpipe emissions rules in court.
API sued the EPA over the vehicle emission standards, with Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers saying that “EPA has exceeded its congressional authority with this regulation that will eliminate most new gas cars and traditional hybrids from the U.S. market in less than a decade.”
What is not clear to me is, what do the anti-EPA forces imagine is the mandate of the EPA if not to set and enforce regulations around impacts on the environment? If the Surpremes eviscerate the EPA then the Supremes are in essence saying congress shall make no laws, period, in which case congress in fact has no reason to exist at all?
Surely the workaround for this is for a law to be passed setting the requirements. Then there’s no interpretation by an agency.
That’s not a “workaround.” That’s how our government is supposed to work.
It is impossible to write a law with sufficient specificity for it to cover most cases and have it run to less than 3000 pages. And new shit comes up anyhow.
Your assumption seems to be courts are incapable of determining the will of Congress as regards environmental law, as contrasted with other law. Now, it could be that the administrative state could be the final arbiter but as de Tocqueville argued a notable feature of the American system was the role of the courts.
a 2nd order effect of stricter efficiency and crash regs *globally** is the darth of affordable new cars that last a long time. (just look at the new vehicle line-up from Ford or GM who conceded the traditional, non-SUV car market to the imports)
the regs have caused a shift to CVTs, small-displacement, turbo engines….these technologies are not robust over 100,000 miles without diligent maintenance whereas a 2005-era 4 cylinder engine + 5-speed transmission could take a lot of abuse and still would outlast the rusty body that surrounded it.
Drivers generally have no idea as to the finicky nature of their new (new-to-them) car, then are shocked when the repair cost of a transmission or turbo failure is >thousands of dollars.
given that most carmakers are global, automakers still have to comply with EU, China regs. even with this reg. regime change, GM is not going to rush out to build a new factory for a new “old school” car model.
Don’t hold your breath for new car affordability to increase.
New BYD Qin-L gets 62mpg city in gas mode (it’s a PHEV) and starts under $14k in rmb. As a PHEV it’ll likely spend most of its working life in pure EV mode i.e. very little ICE wear and tear. Seems like the problem is not with the physics of efficiency but rather with the big 3 autos.
Why they’re not available in the US. We’d seen this WITH those spectacularly simple, repairable Japanese cars (referenced above?) Affordable PHEVs, to replace repairable hybrids & all e-mobility will get BAD press as we buy them up? You could run a house & go to work with a PV/ PHEV combo. No WAY ‘Murikas allowing that?
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60164799/chinese-evs-from-byd-in-mexico/
If government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency no longer have the power to interpret environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, just who exactly does the Supreme Court think does have those powers. Do they think that those corporations will police themself? The FAA tried to outsource flight safety & aircraft inspections to Boeing and look how well that worked out. This decision by the Supreme Court was not really a legal one but an ideological one instead.
In California and other western states, it will be easy to stick it to the Supreme Lunatics and the fossil fuel industry by taxing air pollution. New cars that get 20 mpg or less would pay a $10,000 pollution tax, cars with 20-35 mpg would pay a $6,000 pollution tax, cars with 35-50 mpg would pay a $4,000 pollution tax, PHEVs with an electric range of 50 miles would pay a $1,000 pollution tax,and battery electric vehicles BEV would pay no pollution tax. This would stick it to the Supreme Lunatics and they couldn’t do anything about it. If Congress weren’t owned by fossil fuel, Congress could apply this to the whole country.
For fossil fuel fanatics that say BEVs have pollution when built, that is true for all cars but there is NO tailpipe for air pollution on BEVs (thus no air pollution).
> just who exactly does the Supreme Court think does have those powers
IANAL, but seems pretty clear to me:
“Held: The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous;”
Not really getting all this gnashing of teeth. Sounds to me like “courts”, “independent”, and “judgment”.
I’ve tried repeatedly to post an answer to Rev Kev’s question, with additional commentary intended to be helpful — but nothing’s coming up. I’m not even getting the five-minute edit cue.
For reference, I am an attorney — though not often in court. And I did pretty well in Constitutional law and administrative law — taking the former from a professor who wrote, if not the book, then at least a book. I’d like to think I have something to contribute here to keeping this commentariat the best.
Has this post been closed already? Or am I commentaria non grata because I’ve been adding some late notes to articles I’ve read as I’ve been catching up with NC after falling months behind?
I can’t comment on this post either and I just tried twice. ?????
Hmm. Moderators, could this be checked, please?
I only chime in on this because sounds like you as a lawyer (which I am not) may have something valuable to add. Usually if Skynet tosses there’s some word in the comment that the filter doesn’t like. I notice none of the above posts include the name of the 80s oil company.
John, there’s a delay in posting and visibility due to some angry people spoiling things with spicy language and outré viewpoints undesired by the forum owner. E.g. there is moderation in place. Unfortunately, it’s the price we pay for maintaining a semblance of civility when participants are unable to control themselves and behave like adults.
Put another way . . . patience.
I have this problem using my Comcast home internet connection, and the comments never pass (or get to) moderation. No problem with other internet connections, using the same handle and email addy. I suspect that the site (or a sub-service provider) has fairly broad IP blacklists.
Try commenting from your phone NOT using wifi.
Rev Kev,
It will be the courts, in future cases, that decide whether the EPA has the authority to enact certain regulations and policies that are being challenged by “injured” parties. The courts will decide whether the EPA is interpreting environmental laws correctly and whether said laws authorize the EPA to make such regulations.
That’s why critics are calling this ruling a power grab by the judicial system.
It remains to be seen, but in all likelihood the path scotus is taking us down will require our highly dysfunctional congress to explicitly define the powers of the 3 letter agencies in legislation down to specific subject matters and to continuously update that legislation in light of emerging science, technologies, and societal issues. Whereas the legislation of the last 40 years has been relatively high level (think guidelines) that allowed for the agencies to use their own discretion in creating new reasonable regulations and policies for emerging science, technologies, and societal issues knowing that it’s an impossible task for congress to continuously update legislation.
I guess future court cases will determine what this means for the 3 letter agencies, but I knew where to put my money.
I thank John Beech for his counsel of patience. But since my posting attempts have stretched over a few hours, and a few more hours have gone by since the latest one — and since NothingAccount did manage to get a substantive post up without the company name that Carolinian guessed was the cause of the problem, I’m going to try once more with some wild cards inserted. . . .
ress must specify regulatory requirements more clearly (or even explicitly) in the text of the laws or the courts must interpret the laws themselves. That’s who would get the power the administrative agencies are being stripped of (not “from”, of course; the power is what’s stripped from the agencies — bad writing) by this opinion. It overrules the doctrine (or principle, if you prefer) of C*****n deference (no “the”) — created by the Court’s decision in C*****n v Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 US 837 (1984).
If you’re as tired as I am of articles that don’t get the terminology, the history, and other details right, SCOTUSblog is your friend. But their link uses the C*****n name, so I guess anyone who wants to use the link may have to correct the “misspelling” themselves:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-c*****n-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/
As for what the new regulatory landscape may look like, perhaps we’ll have to go 40 years further back — to the test in Skidmore v Swift & Co, 323 US 134 (1944) . . . and see what deference any individual administrator’s previous statutory interpretations (and other actions) have earned for their latest interpretation.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/323/134/
(There . . . let’s see if that goes up.)
So maybe it was the mention of C*****n!
(I re-tested, just to be a bit closer to sure, and the first try of this reply — with the full name — didn’t go up.)
But since I’d run short of patience in this ordeal, I didn’t notice that my copy-and-pasting of my original comment got cut short at the start . . . so here it is again; previously missing portion in bold. (*sigh*)
The answer to your question, Rev, is that either Congress must specify regulatory requirements more clearly (or even explicitly) in the text of the laws or the courts must interpret the laws themselves. That’s who would get the power the administrative agencies are being stripped of (not “from”, of course; the power is what’s stripped from the agencies — bad writing) by this opinion. It overrules the doctrine (or principle, if you prefer) of C*****n deference — created by the Court’s decision in C*****n v Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 US 837 (1984).
If you’re as tired as I am of articles that don’t get the terminology, the history, and other details right, SCOTUSblog is your friend. But their link uses the C*****n name, so I guess anyone who wants to use the link may have to correct the “misspelling” themselves:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-c*****n-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/
As for what the new regulatory landscape may look like, perhaps we’ll have to go 40 years further back — to the test in Skidmore v Swift & Co, 323 US 134 (1944) . . . and see what deference any individual administrator’s previous statutory interpretations (and other actions) have earned for their latest interpretation.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/323/134/
(But that trick never works.) (This time for sure — PRESTO!)
It seems to me that the whole reason we have so many trucks and SUV’s in this country with horrible gas mileage is directly attributable to EPA regulations regarding the categorizing of vehicles as passenger cars vs. trucks and mileage in relation to wheelbase. To put it another way, consumers might very well be interested in buying smaller cars and trucks that get better mileage, but manufacturers won’t/can’t give them those options because of EPA regulations. So just maybe things would get better from an environmental standpoint vis-a-vis smaller, more fuel-efficient cars on the road if the EPA regs went away. Counter-intuitive, but true and worth a try.
History of the SUV loophole
https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/what-is-the-suv-loophole-and-will-it-close/2654
It goes back to the 1970s and seems to be more the fault of the Congress or at least their fault for not closing it. Needless to say the auto manufacturers have a big lobby and their pitch is that the loophole is justified because truck sized vehicles are what the public wants to buy.
.
Which is why they won’t let the BYD be sold in the US, right?