In a Thursday ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.
The high court’s 6-3 ruling, which was decided along justices’ ideological leanings, delivered a victory to Republican-controlled states’ efforts to allow industry to operate under a less-restrictive version of the Clean Air Act.
Declaring that the administrative agency did not hold sweeping authority to regulate power plant-produced greenhouse gases, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority’s opinion that Congress would need to specifically grant the EPA with such broad jurisdiction.
“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” wrote Roberts.
In a social media post celebrating the ruling, Alabama Public Service Commission (PSC) President Twinkle Cavanaugh took the EPA to task and railed against President Joe Biden’s “tyrannical measures” he had employed to implement the national left’s “socialist agenda.”
“A huge win for American families and our energy freedom,” declared Cavanaugh in a tweet. “Obama and Biden have exercised tyrannical measures to force their climate socialist agenda on our country. The EPA has been a puppet for liberal lobbyists and lawyers for too long. They have finally been put in check.”
U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover), a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, asserted that the ruling was “long overdue.”
“[Thursday’s] Supreme Court decision to rein in the EPA in regard to the agency’s overreach in regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act is a long overdue recognition by the Court that there are limits to the EPA’s authority to legislate through regulation,” proclaimed Palmer. “Former Rep. John Dingell, the Democrat who helped write the Clean Air Act, stated the EPA was outside of its authority by imposing new rules on greenhouse gas coming from power plants during the Obama Administration.”
Palmer made mention of past legislation that he had authored to allow Congress to regain regulatory control over greenhouse-gas emissions and to strip the EPA of unauthorized administrative power.
“This ruling is consistent with my Stopping EPA Overreach Act I introduced in 2017, which would make it clear the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that would reassert the responsibility of Congress to make law,” noted the congressman. “American families are struggling with inflationary regulatory costs imposed by unelected bureaucrats at the EPA and other federal agencies.”
Palmer concluded, “Americans didn’t elect the bureaucrats at the EPA to issue inflationary regulations that destroy jobs, increase energy prices and drive up the cost of living. I am grateful for the Supreme Court’s decision reining in the EPA’s overreach.”
Dylan Smith is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
