SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts Just Handed Obama a Major Victory

Brittany M. Hughes | March 3, 2016
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While the public's eye is turned to the high-profile abortion battle currently playing out within the marble walls of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday unilaterally blocked a plea from 20 states to stall part of President Obama’s clean air regulations – a decision that marks a major victory for the administration’s sweeping environmental reforms.

Although the Court ruled in a 5-4 decision last year that the administration’s Clean Power Act was in fact illegal, Roberts is allowing the administration’s controversial and unilaterally-imposed regulations on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants to stand. This comes despite a request from the 20-state coalition against the regulations, which argues that the Court has already determined the law that comprises the foundation of the regulations to be unconstitutional.

The EPA argues that it is already working on addressing the issues with the current regulations, claiming that “[t]he requested stay would harm the public interest by undermining reliance interests and the public health and environmental benefits associated with the rule.”

From The Hill:

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rejected a plea Thursday to block a contentious air pollution rule for power plants in a big victory for the Obama administration.

Roberts’s order came despite his court’s 5-4 decision last year ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, is illegal.

Michigan led a group of 20 states last month — empowered by the Supreme Court’s recent unprecedented decision to halt the EPA’s carbon dioxide rule for power plants — in asking the court to live up to its ruling last year and block the regulation’s enforcement.  

While the mercury regulation is a separate rule from the administration’s highly contested carbon emissions policy, both mandates are part of the president’s unilateral moves to combat climate change. And though SCOTUS did not overturn the clean air regulations, the high court did rule last June that the EPA could not impose undue regulatory burdens on the states without considering the cost of the mandates.

Roberts' somewhat surprising decision Thursday came less than one day after the EPA responded to the states’ request that the regulations be blocked. In doing do, Roberts chose not to bring the states' request before the entire Court and risk a 4-4 split decision in the now eight-person court.

According to the New York Times:

Chief Justice Roberts rejected an application from 20 states that said a federal appeals court in Washington had effectively thwarted their victory in the Supreme Court in June, when the high court ruled that the E.P.A. had failed to take into account the punishing costs its mercury regulation would impose. In that 5-to-4 decision, Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency had run afoul of the Clean Air Act by deciding to regulate the emissions without first undertaking a cost-benefit analysis to show the regulation to be “appropriate and necessary.”

The NYT added that the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away suddenly last month, had sided with the states against the EPA in the landmark decision. Oddly enough, Roberts had also voted against the EPA's rule in last year's decision.

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