This story originally appeared in Board and is part of the Climate Table collaboration.
American environmental law is a relatively young discipline. The Environmental Protection Agency is just over 50 years old, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts—legislations we now regard as pillars of public health and environmental safeguards—were passed in 1963 and 1973, respectively. When the case that would become law was filed, Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council It was introduced in the early 1980s, when the EPA was just beginning to develop rules that would have significant economic consequences for business and industry.
In its decision last week to revoke Chevron Out of deference — a crucial legal precedent that gives federal agencies the ability to interpret laws that would otherwise be vague or ambiguous — the Supreme Court has taken the future of untold numbers of regulations on public health, clean water and clean air out of the hands of scientists and organizations like the EPA and into the hands of lay judges who will hear challenges to these regulations in court.
“Anyone who disagrees with a regulation by a federal agency can now take it to court,” said Jillian Blanchard, director of Lawyers for Good Government. “It’s scary.”
Overturn Chevron It is just one cog in a larger plan to dismantle the administrative state and environmental law as we know it, and the ultraconservative forces and fossil fuel advocates like the Koch brothers behind it are just getting started.
Ironically, the Chevron The decision was initially seen as a victory for polluting industries. The Clean Air Act mandates that new stationary sources of pollution undergo agency review, but it does not define exactly what a source is. In the early 1980s, the Reagan EPA, led by Anne Gorsuch, the mother of current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, expanded the definition of a source to include new sources of pollution. fountain meaning a factory or an entire complex. This significantly cut red tape for polluting industries, which previously had to go through government approval processes to add individual smokestacks to larger facilities. The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA and won; Chevron interfered and took the case to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled 8-0 to reverse the lower court’s decision and handed a victory to the oil giant and the EPA.
The doctrine established by the case was also seen as a good tool for corporate life. Industries rely on consistent federal guidelines to build their business models. Getting the details of regulations out of the courts and into the hands of agencies provided stability for companies that needed to plan for the future.
“When the deference doctrine became law, everyone started to rely on it,” Blanchard said. “You might not like an agency’s decision on something, but you could rely on the fact that at least you can trust the process.”
Subsequent administrations passed much stricter environmental regulations using the Chevron The EPA, especially under Democratic presidents, increasingly came to be viewed as a burdensome, anti-business agency by both industrial interests and ultra-conservative leaders. Even Antonin Scalia, who for most of his career was a proponent of the Chevronshowed signs of doctrine fatigue in his later years.
