Biden’s Inaugural EPA Present Returned By Supremes?

WSJ says Monday was “cleanup duty at the Supreme Court as the Justices [took] up an errant decision” by the DC Appeals Court last yr reviving Obama’s Clean Power Plan to give EPA power to force coal plants to convert to renewables…after the Justices had blocked it 6 yrs ago.

The technology & science may be complicated, but the law ain’t: “At issue in West Virginia v EPA is whether Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency a limitless license to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.” The thing is, “the Obama EPA divined its regulatory authority from a section of the Clean Air Act that requires states to submit plans setting ‘standards of performance’ for sources of emissions within their borders”, even though the EPA had never before used this section to regulate “a gas as ubiquitous as C02 or force wholesale technological shifts in industries.”

Back in 2016, a 5-4 majority of Justices kiboshed the rule. The Trump EPA then rescinded & replaced it with a narrower one regulating C02 from coal plants. That wasn’t good enough for the environmental lobby or Democratic states who sued to block the Trump “repeal & replacement.” The liberal DC Circuit panel decided 2-1 on Jan. 19, 2021 – “a day before President Biden’s inauguration – vacated both “thus resurrecting the Clean Power Plan,” which the Environmental Defense Fund called “the perfect Inauguration Day present.” But, even “inappropriate” presents can be returned, can’t they?

Davd Soul