E.P.A.'s Right to Set Air Rules Wins Supreme Court Backing (original) (raw)

U.S.|E.P.A.'s Right to Set Air Rules Wins Supreme Court Backing

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/28/us/epa-s-right-to-set-air-rules-wins-supreme-court-backing.html

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Feb. 28, 2001

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February 28, 2001

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The Supreme Court today unanimously and decisively rejected an industry attack on the Clean Air Act in one of the court's most important environmental rulings in years.

In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court ruled that in setting national air quality standards, the Environmental Protection Agency must consider only the requirements of public health and safety and may not engage in the cost-benefit analysis that a coalition of industry groups sought to import into the statute.

Further, the court held that the Environmental Protection Agency's broad standard-setting authority did not amount to an unconstitutional delegation by Congress of legislative power to an executive branch agency. This part of the opinion rejected a ruling by a federal appeals court here that was widely viewed as one of the most powerful judicial attacks since the New Deal on the legal foundations of the modern administrative state.

The decision today dealt with new standards for two pollutants -- ground-level ozone, which causes smog, and fine airborne particles, commonly known as soot -- that the Environmental Protection Agency issued in 1997.

The new ozone standard has been the subject of fierce dispute, imposing substantial costs on industry and pitting states against one another, depending on whether they are ''upwind'' or ''downwind'' of sources of pollution. While upholding the agency's authority to issue the standard, the court today rejected the E.P.A.'s plan for applying it in regions of the country, chiefly major metropolitan areas, that have not yet met the previous ozone standard.

The court sent the ozone standard back to the agency for a new implementation plan, one that must take account of two provisions of the Clean Air Act that in some respects are mutually contradictory. Reconciling these two provisions, one a general provision and one specific to ozone, will not necessarily be easy, and further delays in putting the new standard into effect are highly likely. This aspect of the opinion was confusing, and led to a number of different interpretations today.

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