Four recent Supreme Court decisions will together make it much harder for the federal government to take action on climate change
The Supreme Court on Monday weakened a law protecting federal regulations from lawsuits, granting the companies governed by those rules more time to challenge them. The move effectively eliminates any statute of limitations on rules issued by a wide range of federal agencies, potentially placing even long-standing regulations in legal peril.
That ruling came just days after the court, in a seismic decision, overturned the Chevron doctrine. The decades-old legal precedent provided the basis for regulations governing countless aspects of daily life, from the environment to labor protections. These decisions, coupled with two others issued last week, could sharply curtail the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies to limit air pollution, govern toxic substances, and set climate policy.
“This term, a series of decisions unlike any before in American history,” has resulted in “an unraveling of the responsibility that expert agencies have to protect millions of Americans from harm,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel at the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund.
Although these lawsuits challenged the power of a range of agencies, from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Department of Commerce, the decisions will have widespread impacts on those issuing climate policies. The EPA in particular has drawn scorn from conservatives who have long argued that its regulations pose an undue burden on everything from power generation to construction.
In one decision after another, the court’s conservative justices largely agreed. In its most far-reaching ruling, handed down Friday, they threw into question the future of environmental and climate regulations by overturning the precedent that gave federal agencies authority to interpret laws based on their expertise and scientific evidence. It will be years before the full impact of its decision to scuttle Chevron becomes clear, but it could prompt lawsuits aimed at regulations designed to mitigate climate change.