WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has voted to uphold the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency in a Clean Air Act ruling regarding the regulation of smog from coal plants that drifts across state lines.
The 6-2 ruling, issued Tuesday, is considered by many to be a major victory for the Obama administration, which has focused on new regulations targeting coal-fired power plants and their pollution in what opponents have called a "war on coal."
The EPA rule will require polluting states to cut pollution not only related to the amounts of pollution each state produces, but also related to how a state can make the cuts in the most cost-effective manner. Basically, states that can cut the pollution more inexpensively than others will be required to cut more pollution.
Power companies and several states -- including West Virginia -- sued to block the rule, and a federal appeals court ruled for them in 2012. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey had filed an amicus brief opposing the EPA rule.
Tuesday's decision was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recused himself.
Also on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the EPA to have new regulations ready by Dec. 1 regarding smog pollution from coal-fired power plants and other major polluters. And earlier in April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld EPA emission standards that would cut coal-plant pollution from mercury.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision is a resounding victory for public health and a key component of EPA’s efforts to make sure all Americans have clean air to breathe,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement, adding that “the court’s finding also underscores the importance of basing the agency’s efforts on strong legal foundations and sound science.”
At the heart of Tuesday's ruling, the interstate air pollution regulation -- which some called the "good neighbor rule" -- had Midwest, Appalachian and Southern states such as West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky at odds against "downwind" East Coast states such as New York and Connecticut.
The EPA argued that the rules would protect the health and the environment of downwind states.
Ginsburg quoted the Bible in her opinion.
“Most upwind states contribute to pollution to multiple downwind states in varying amounts. ... Some pollutants stay within upwind states’ borders, the wind carries others to downwind states, and some subset of that group drifts to states without air quality problems,” she wrote. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.”
In their dissent, Scalia and Thomas said the EPA had "zero textual basis" and that the rule was possibly Marxist.
“Today’s decision feeds the uncontrolled growth of the administrative state at the expense of government by the people,” Scalia said, reading part of his dissent from the bench. The result “comes at the expense of endorsing, and thereby encouraging for the future, rogue administration of the law. ...
“I fully acknowledge that the proportional-reduction approach will demand some complicated computations where one upwind state is linked to multiple downwind states and vice versa,” Scalia wrote. “I am confident, however, that EPA’s skilled number-crunchers can adhere to the statute’s quantitative (rather than efficiency) mandate by crafting quantitative solutions.
"Indeed, those calculations can be performed at the desk, whereas the ‘from each according to its ability’ approach requires the unwieldy field examination of many pollution-producing sources with many sorts of equipment,” he said, paraphrasing Karl Marx.
Ginsburg, however, said Scalia’s idea would mean “costly overregulation, calling his idea “both inefficient and inequitable.”
Many coal-fired plants already have shut down because of EPA regulations, and experts say this ruling could force more to either install pollution "scrubbers" or shut down.
Republicans in Congress criticized the ruling.
“This is just the latest blow to jobs and affordable energy,” Representative Edward Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement. “The administration’s overreaching regulation will drive up energy costs and threaten jobs and electric reliability. We cannot allow EPA’s aggressive regulatory expansion to go unchecked.
"We will continue our oversight of the agency and our efforts to protect American families and workers from E.P.A.’s onslaught of costly rules.”
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said he was not pleased by the ruling.
“I am deeply disappointed in today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court,” Tomblin said. “This is yet another blow to West Virginia’s coal miners, their families and our energy industry.
"I am committed to working with our federal delegation to closely monitor the effects of this ruling. I hope this ruling does not foreshadow the Court’s view on pending greenhouse gas regulations.”