Supreme Court Makes “Major” Improvement to Administrative Law in West Virginia v. EPA

William YeatmanBy a 6 –3 vote, the Supreme Court inWest Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency took an important step toward restoring constitutional balance to federal policymaking. ThoughWashington Post columnist George Will probably overstates the case in calling it the “term’s most momentous decision,” he is right that this is a big deal. As I discuss below, the Cato Institute perhaps played a role in this welcome result.So, what happened? Setting aside the case ’s backstory (explainedhere), the immediate result is that the EPA doesn ’t have the power to impose a nationwide cap ‐​and‐​trade climate policy based on an “ancillary” part of the law that no one had heard of before the Obama administration. The Biden administrationis working on a significant climate rule based on the very statutory provision at issue inWest Virginia v. EPA, so the Court ’s holding provides guidance as to what the EPA cannot do.But it ’s how the Court reached this result that will have lasting consequences. In ruling against the government, Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion “announces the arrival of the ‘major questions doctrine,’ as put in a dissent by Justice Kagan.And what is the “major questions doctrine”? It is, the Chief Justice explains, no more than “common sense” regarding how Congress works. Basically, it’s the Court’s belief that Congress will be clear when it assigns major policymaking auth...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs