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SCOTUS: Clean Air Act Trumps Emissions Lawsuits
schwit1 writes "The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration. The justices unanimously overturned a ruling by a US appeals court that the lawsuit now involving six states can proceed in an effort to force the coal-burning plants to cut emissions of gases that contribute to climate change. In a defeat for environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency under the clean air laws. The ruling stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit claiming the five electric utilities have created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The lawsuit wanted a federal judge to order them to cut their carbon dioxide emissions."
Dear US residents, prepare to pay 40c/kwh for power. And please continue buying it from us in Canada at 30c/kwh. Enjoy the inflation.
Om, nomnomnom...
For the Obamanator.
....buuuuurn.
That's just coaaaaaal
Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency
Yes, and I'm sure they're going to start doing that any day now.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Jesus told me so
It would be nice if technology evolves so you could generate your own power easily, perhaps with a few neighbors - and not pay or support any company at all.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
...sometimes they actually get it right. Sort of.
Go figure.
Now if they could only figure out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and therefore does not fall under the Clean Air Act either...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
With apologies to Kermit and the rest of the at risk biomass, I humbly submit, World's oceans in 'shocking' decline.
This is an interesting ruling to me in that it is more about the balance of power between the three branches of government than it is about the subject of the lawsuit, greenhouse gases in this case.
It has become fairly common for activists to seek court orders to impose their pet issues rather than go through the incredibly slow sausage-making process of legislative reform. This ruling is a smackdown from the Supreme Court saying "no, you six states cannot get a judge to rewrite environmental policy for you. If you want a policy change, you have to do it the old-fashioned way, by getting Congress to tell the EPA what to do. That's why you states have representatives in Congress in the first place."
Regardless of how one feels about CO2 emissions regulation, I think it is none the less a Good Thing that SCOTUS has blocked off this back channel to overriding the normal policy-making process. It's not a sweeping ruling but it is a precedent. Also interesting is that here we have a clear case of the judiciary ruling to limit the power of ... the judiciary. Kind of. How often do you see something like that?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Clearly, if CA and others could overrule the Fed. government and force additional regs on industry, then Texas and Louisiana could do the opposite.
But would you be willing to breath an atmosphere that was 100% carbon dioxide? No?
g=
The ruling states that the CAA "displaces" the plaintiff's rights to sue. Meaning that now, we all have fewer rights to sue under the common law, even if the emitters are unequivocally imposing on our rights, such as that to clean air. And this could be applied elsewhere, including, say, contaminated drugs, if SCOTUS were to find the federal law had "displaced" our common law rights.
I find that limiting, not empowering.
So SCOTUS has now ruled that private individuals cannot sue to get some thing done because a federal agency -- one that for decades has been utterly unable to fulfill its mission -- exists with a responsibility for that thing. Imagine if they had decided that school segregation was a matter best left to the appropriate agency.
I'm wondering about this anyway. Don't the States license these plants? I know the State legislature here went round and round about the last big power plant they built here. We've got something called the Public Services Commission that decides how much they can charge for power.
This is an odd ruling. Where does it state in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendments, or any other federal documents that the federal government has sole authority over environmental protection? Surely this can't be considered interstate commerce since we're talking about individual states.
I'm not a believer of man made global warming so I have mixed emotions on this. States should be able to set stricter laws and regulations on activities within their border as they see fit. It shouldn't matter if it is the environment or immigration. We already have this with road use regulations, health care, etc.
The United States is not a country of the masses. It is an alliance of individual states. It is sad that most people (especially the federal government) forget this.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
In very many places the law disallows suits over things. We don't need thousands of suits clogging up the courts over issues that have already been decided by law or already have an alternate legal venue prescribed by law.
People who bring such suits need to be punished for abuse of the court system.
I am confused by the article. It could mean one of two very different things:
1) The states passed laws requiring the corporations to cut their emissions even further than what the EPA required. The companies did not comply so the states sued. The Supreme Court ruled that the state laws do not trump the federal law, so they cannot be enforced.
-- OR --
2) The states sued the companies for damages, even though the companies complied with the federal law.
The implications are very different. The first one would surprise me: it seems like a states rights issue. States often times impose local environmental restrictions that may be beyond the federal requirements. If it was the latter, then I am not surprised. This happens all the time with anything where there is any form of regulation or standard practice. If the entity is following the regulation or best practice, they are generally immune from suits. Ex: Suppose a boat captain requires everyone to wear a life jacket, properly maintains the boat according to all the rules, has coast guard inspections, training, certificates, etc.... the captain is probably not liable if the boat catches fire and kills someone . Often times the regulatory body gets sued instead. In the above example, the coast guard may be sued for having lax rules.
The same court that upheld the freedom of speech instead of the freedom to censor?
Not seeing an issue, other than they continue to make wise choices. And in the case of the decision mentioned in the article , the choice was unanimous...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The energy industry paid good money to neuter the Environmental Protection Agency. You can't just come in here and try to use the judicial system as a venue for the redress of grievances against the federal government. Oh..., wait.
Please, for the good of America. Shoot yourself. Now.
Ahh, the classic liberal solution - instead of debate, silence or elimination of those ideologically opposed to you.
Happily for the world, liberals are generally not fond of weapons so they cannot bring such dreams to fruition, whereas conservatives are better armed but more responsible and open minded.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can do anything you want as long as you don't fry the frickin' planet.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently yes for many people.
And don't give me "the science is wrong" crap. I heard it straight from the co-chair of working group 1 of the IPCC last week.
The science is high-quality. The predictions are getting worse (for us) every time they are revised. The evidence that humans
are a major cause is clear. As the CO2 is increasing, O2 is decreasing correspondingly, showing that the CO2 emissions
are from combustion processes. "The science is wrong" is a desperate last-ditch appeal by the ignorant or malicious to
the ignorant.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Well stated. If I hadn't already posted in this discussion, I would mod your comment up. Few people grasp the heart of these matters as they are cleverly obscured.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I agree. I said the same thing when the Nazi's were taking over Europe. The world will have another war. If not from Hitler then from someone else. We're better off focusing on our economy so we're better able to adapt to our new Nazi overlords... within reason of course. I'm not an advocate of being a coward, but we're not ready to defend ourselves and our families from a clear and present danger.
You mean ' defeat for consumers '
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The EPA is filled with energy company executies and lobbiests who hate the environment and favor polluters. This all started under Reagan and Bush even hired an oil company lobbiest from Chevron or Enron to head the EPA!
This is why the suite was brought up and the bad guys one. The EPA will simply not enforce it unless people are falling dead in the streets as they work to help out the polluters. I have no idea what this is even legal to begin with, but we saw during deep water horizon just how corrupt the government's drilling and natural resource departments under the department of interior were. The heads of these departments have gifts from oil companies on their desks and the same inspectors also interview for jobs by the same companies by looking the other way and not doing their job.
http://saveie6.com/
The States are suing plants in nearby States.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
enacting "laws" via states suing in federal court would be horrible public policy, it would create an (even more) unaccountable secondary legislature and signing committee made up of the states attorneys general and the SCOTUS
this is not the way laws and rules are supposed to be made.
I strongly agree with regulating CO2 emissions but it must be done in a constitutionally proper manner or the whole thing lacks legitimacy
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If the Republicans had been in power, the government would have taken the same position. This has nothing to do with the Obama administration.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Considering that the Appellate Court is meant to essentially act as a gatekeeper to the next level of the legal system, I'm surprised that there's no mechanism to enforce SOME sense of intellectual rigor on appellate rulings. If the Supremes are consistently overruling a certain appellate court's findings (or any lower court, really) wouldn't that suggest that the lower court(s) are aren't doing their jobs, or in other words: that they don't correctly understand the law?
-Styopa
Frankly, I would love to see some group of lawyers stand in court trying to show "harm" (required for any tort) based on someone releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. I'm sure it would be really interesting.
If it works, maybe those tornado victims in Alabama can find someone in Brazil that killed a butterfly for the damage to their homes and loss of life.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
the Supreme Court agreed with the companies [that the law, the way congress wrote it, says] that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the EPA...
What then?
Add "Congress said" to the front of Supreme Court decisions and see what it sounds like.
there is no law against destroying the planet for our children.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251248&cid=36509086 and falconhell? Some FYI for you, from Jesse Ventura of all people (former gov. of minnesota iirc & former WWF star + actor etc.):
He, a former MAJOR politician, said they're ALL THE SAME!
They ONLY ACT as if there was a "2 party system" Dems vs. Repubs etc. but he said it was like the WWF, where the fight is staged, & they trash talk one another etc. (but in reality it's all an act, & they go and laugh about it over drinks later).
In fact?
Check campaign contributions from ANY MAJOR CORPORATION TOO: They "hedge their bets" & FUND BOTH SIDES CAMPAIGNS
(So - Don't let this 2 party b.s. get you man, it's an act largely by those in power (and they're not politicians - it's the wealthy pulling the puppet strings & using "divide & conquer" tactics - keep them fighting one another, they can't be strong enough to take us down etc. train of thought)).
There's a lot of additional backing information at places online like topdocumentaryfilms.com too that back it, check there... that place will educate you on a lot of things we've all been fed as a complete line of horseshit (and it's better than watching say, "Dance with the Stars").
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251248&cid=36509086
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251248&cid=36509086
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251248&cid=36509086