CEI, Southeastern Legal Foundation, Lawmakers Seek Supreme Court Review of EPA “Endangerment” Regs

Washington, D.C., April 23, 2013 – In a lawsuit challenging over-reaching greenhouse gas regulations, the Competitive Enterprise Institute joined the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a host of lawmakers and several companies in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that upheld EPA.

The case involves a 2009 finding by President Obama’s EPA that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health under the terms of the Clean Air Act. Based on that finding, EPA has promulgated massive regulations restricting CO₂ for new motor vehicles and countless types of businesses.

EPA’s actions were challenged in court on the grounds they were unauthorized by statute and that EPA’s scientific assessments were arbitrary and capricious, especially in light of the Climategate revelations, email conversations disclosed in late 2009 that raised new questions and doubts about the scientific basis for those actions. But last June, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled in the agency’s favor, relying in large part on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in  Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007. That case held that greenhouse gases fall within regulatory purview of the Clean Air Act.  The panel also deferred to EPA’s treatment of global warming science. In December, the full circuit ruled against rehearing the case en banc, but two judges issued powerful dissents from that decision.”

“This most massive regulatory regime in American history deserves the highest level of judicial scrutiny. We hope it receives it,” said Sam Kazman, CEI General Counsel.

The petition asks the Supreme Court to consider whether EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act when doing so requires a regulatory regime so huge that the agency itself must rewrite the underlying law. The petition also seeks review of the lower court’s perfunctory upholding of EPA’s “science,” given the admitted uncertainty and lack of independent agency judgment that went into it.

See also:

Southeastern Legal Foundation v. EPA