Perspective: No matter the outcome of West Virginia v. EPA, the agency can take action to engage the public and make data more accessible
Regulations did finally come because of outside pressure. In the early 2000s, a coalition of groups sued George W. Bush’s EPA, arguing it had a duty to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. The controversial, which tapped fundamental constitutional questions about Congress’s delegation of authority, went to the Supreme Court.
In a 5-to-4 decision in 2007, the court ruled that GHGs were “pollutants” under the Clean Air Act, and the agency was legally bound to regulate them if it found them to be a danger to public health. The EPA did find they endangered public health, and it issued regulations under President Barack Obama in the 2010s. The regulations targeting power plants have, however, subsequently been subject to a paralyzing mix of lawsuits and attempted repeals during the Trump administration.
That’s why the changing conservative composition of the Supreme Court matters. It was the current right-wing, a case in which the petitioners ask the court to preemptively tell the EPA how to craft regulations. That is not normal.What will happen in this case? The court could use a narrow interpretation of the Clean Air Act to hobble the EPA’s options for cleaning up the power plant sector.
of federal agencies. A sweeping ruling like that is unlikely, but its possibility portends a new era for the EPA.It could improve and elevate one of its important, if largely unsung, functions: collecting and disseminating data about emissions, violations and enforcement actions. Data collection has been integral to EPA regulation from the beginning. Since the 1980s, it has developed other data inventories with the explicit purpose of informing the public.
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