Supreme Court reviews EPA power grab

 Victoria Taft:

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In 2019, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Power Plan and installed another policy, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE), that gave states more latitude in setting power plant and greenhouse gas standards. Indeed, under the Trump Administration policies and market forces, the original Clean Power Plan emissions standards were already being met.

But the deep state moved into action. SCOTUSblog relates that on Trump’s last full day in office, “the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, vacated the ACE Rule, and sent the issue back to the EPA for additional proceedings.”

Now the fight over this power play is at the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the energy states, the lower court gave the EPA unchecked authority to dictate policy, subsuming what is supposed to be Congress’s power under the “major questions” and “non-delegation” policies.

The court heard arguments on Monday about who should make decisions that can change huge swaths of industry and the U.S. economy: the people we elect to Congress or EPA bureaucrats.

Steve Milloy, who is the founder of JunkScience.com and a former Trump transition team member, said in an email he was encouraged that “the justices seemed in agreement that Congress has not expressly allowed EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under that section, although Justices Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor seemed inclined to find a way to shoehorn EPA into authority under broad and vague language in the Clean Air Act.”

Some power companies have taken the EPA’s — and Biden Administration’s — side in the case. And it comes down to sticking with the bureaucrats they’re used to instead of the wildcards in Congress. An executive with the Edison Electric Institute told CNN that dealing with Congress “would be chaos.” “Instead of EPA utilizing its world of expert authority to craft regulations, our members would be thrown into a world of tort and nuisance suits,” according to the company’s general counsel Alex Bond.

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What the court should decide is that it is up to Congress to determine the range of policies the EPA can use.  That is not chaos.  It is normal order for regulatory agencies.   It is something that should not be left in the hands of bureaucrats and control freaks.