In a precedent-setting and highly controversial ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
In a 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court ruled that Congress—not the EPA—has authority to devise emissions limits for power plants.
The Supreme Court’s decision addressed a yearslong controversy concerning the EPA’s authority under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. In 2015, under the Obama administration, the EPA adopted the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and called on states to require clean energy alternatives, like wind and solar.
But in 2016, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Clean Power Plan preventing the rule from taking effect. It was then repealed in 2019 by the Trump administration, based on the argument that the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and supporting parties challenged the repeal. West Virginia argued, however, the EPA was overstepping its authority in regulating climate change, that the agency had authority to regulate only stationary sources including in the original Act.
Major Questions Doctrine
The Court’s June 30 decision marks the first time the Court in a majority opinion explicitly applied the so-called “major questions doctrine” to justify its decision. The language of that controversial doctrine states: “If an agency seeks to decide an issue of major national significance, its action must be supported by clear statutory authorization.”
“On EPA’s view of Section 111(d), Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in the basic regulation of how Americans get their energy. There is little reason to think Congress did so,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion for the Court.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day.’” Roberts wrote. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d).”
Roberts was joined in his majority opinion by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all appointed by Republican presidents.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion critical of the majority decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. “Today the Court strips the EPA of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,” Kagan wrote. “This Court has obstructed EPA’s effort from the beginning. Right after the Obama administration issued the Clean Power Plan, the Court stayed its implementation,” she continued. “That action was unprecedented: Never before had the Court stayed a regulation then under review in the lower courts.”
Concluded Kagan, “The subject matter of the regulation here makes the Court’s intervention all the more troubling. Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet, the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself, instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions comes in the wake of controversial decisions from the court overturning Roe v. Wade, limiting abortion rights, and on gun control. It will likely mark the end of a contentious season of Supreme Court rulings that have had a profound impact on companies and their compliance functions. 
Jaclyn Jaeger is a contributing editor at Compliance Chief 360° and a freelance business writer based in Manchester, New Hampshire.