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Court Blocks EPA Effort To Suspend Obama-Era Methane Rule (pbs.org)
Michael Biesecker reports via PBS: A federal appeals court in Washington ruled Monday that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of a new rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks. In a split decision, the three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered the EPA to move forward with the Obama-era requirement that aims to reduce planet-warming emissions from oil and gas operations. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced in April that he would delay by 90 days the deadline for oil and gas companies to follow the new rule, so that the agency could reconsider the measure. Last month, Pruitt announced he intended to extend the 90-day stay for two years. In a detailed 31-page ruling, the court disagreed with Pruitt's contention that industry groups had not had sufficient opportunity to comment before the 2016 rule was enacted. The judges also said Pruitt lacked the legal authority to delay the rule from taking effect.
Does the EPA go to court try to make the envirnment worse.
...that the EPA doesn't have the authority to implement it's own rules. This ruling will go down in stinky methane flames on appeal. Courts should really try to stick to law.
Imagine if every government threw out everything agreed by the last government, just to score political points.
Really Pruitt needs to be more professional here. Country before party.
The EPA wants to delay enforcement of a regulation they wrote, correct? If the EPA wants to delay enforcement then would not that be within their authority as an executive agency? I'm confused. If the EPA doesn't want to enforce this rule then I'd expect this rule to disappear right quick. I realize that there are procedures they have to follow to remove a rule from the federal register so follow the procedures and make it happen.
Here's what I expect to happen, the EPA will appeal and in the mean time not enforce the rule AND start the process to remove the rules they don't want to enforce. By the time this gets to SCOTUS the rules will be gone and the point moot.
Also, seems like just another dick move by Obama to enact a rule that he would not have to enforce. Not that Trump has not already done similar things in his short time as POTUS, this is a common dick move by all elected officials and I'd rather they stop doing it.
It's real easy to make a law or rule that does not come into force until the person that passed the law or rule does not actually have to deal with. They get the praise for "doing something" but if it fails then someone else gets the blame. Kind of like what is happening right now.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Something about this smells really bad.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Pruitt is trying to create a DEFACTO status quo bypassing the EPAs rules for review. He's making the decision FIRST, then implementing the process to make that decision SECOND.
He can't do that.
Imagine if an election board could simply decide to suspend an election while it decides how to secure the election from Russian hackers? Or Trump could simply decide to suspend implementation of any Congress passed law while he decides how it should be 'best' implmented.
It's similar to the Visa thing. Trump cannot change the laws beyond the limits Congress has set him. This is why the Supreme Court has done this weird thing of allowing the legal part of Trump's travel ban through while literally making the whole of the Executive branch liable for contempt of court if they follow it the non-legal bit. Normally Supremes would strike down the whole Executive order and President would rewrite it to comply, but Trump would just throw a tantrum, so they enjoined the Executive branch instead. Putting the grownups in charge.
Every one of these major decisions by judges on the east and west coast just ignore the law. All them are going down on appeal or at the supreme court.
OK; I'm for being good stewards of God's green earth, but now the courts ruling on a rule that's not even a law? The court's overstepped their authority period. Time for the court to judge law and not un-passed rules that are dictates from a commander and chief. It's the executive branch that enforces such rules. It's only the judicial's responsibility to rule on current law. :)
If yes - then it can't be changed. If not - then it's at the whim of the current Administration. From what I read, this is really an executive/Administrative rule that is not tied to passed legislation. Thus it can be changed at the will of the Administration. The judges way overstepped their boundaries.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Pruitt is trying to delay this for two years while he follows a process to change the rules. Two years. He has his department and its rules, and he has to follow those rules to make that change. Court has ruled correctly, this two year delay is nothing but a defacto cancelling of the rule. It's a Pruitt power grab.
If he wants his department rules to be easier, then he can go to Trump. If Trump tries to ease them beyond Executive branch powers, then courts will strike that down and he has to go to Congress. The court is what stops little emperors like Pruitt making their little empires.
Trump's travel ban is similar. Trump cannot simply ignore the Immigration and Nationality Act/1965 or the Constitution for 90 days while he reviews them. If he wants the law changed, he has to go to Congress, and propose the law change, and they have to get Senate to sign off on it, and it mustn't to violate the Constitution etc. etc. etc...
They have not ruled on the merits of that law change, only that he has to follow the law making processes. Or in fact the way they've done it, means the whole Executive branch is required to follow the law making processes.
moratorium? Yet they call it a ban.
staying true to your motto of profit before environment.
The EPA wants to delay enforcement of a regulation they wrote, correct? If the EPA wants to delay enforcement then would not that be within their authority as an executive agency? I'm confused.
"Follow the procedures and make it happen" is the right answer. Likely the EPA didn't. A regulation is not like an internal company policy--it can only be created and enforced in ways that are authorized by law. The short version is that if an administrative agency exceeds the scope of its Congressional grant of authority, acts in an arbitrary and capricious manner, fails to follow the legal rulemaking process, or takes action which otherwise is contrary to law, then people who are harmed can take them to court. That's a big part of how the federal government works, although the regulatory process is so under-taught in our schools that probably most of the country doesn't really know it exists.
People can also apply to courts to force agencies and government officials to do their job, although it's rare to do so explicitly.
Real lawyers write in C++
No, if Pruitt could simply cancel the rule he would. He knows he doesn't have the power to do that without an environmental impact study, so he 'delays' it for 2 years instead. The court see right through the '2 years delay is not a cancelling' bullshit.
Perhaps you missed Pruitts other rulings, e.g. Dow Chemicals Chlorpyrifos Pesticide will not be banned, despite proven brain damage to unborn babies in rural areas and many poisioning cases of farmworkers exposed to it and its increasing presence in food.
Do you think Pruitt's decision can waive away the liabilty of the brain damage? Or that his department can now waive away the food safetly laws?
Do you think the American Anti Corruption Act, does not apply to Trump? That he can receive money from Dow Chemicals in the form of payments for golf related events to Trump? And that's somehow OK, because its Trump?
I'm not even sure where to begin. This ruling came from a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. Assuming you consider that to be the east coast, you realize that the Supreme Court is also located in Washington, DC and is therefore also populated by what you consider "east coast judges?" As an aside, the three jurists involved in this ruling are originally from Indiana, Alabama, and DC. These are not the west coast lefties you seem to presume they are.
All the commenters here saying, "I don't get why the EPA can be stopped from deciding its own regulations, etc. etc." don't really understand how regulation works, I think.
When a department of the government issues a regulation, it has to do so with public comment, input, and published reasoning. That, by the way, is an admirable aspect of our country, and why we're not some third world banana republic. People would be thankful for this, I'd think.
When some new administration comes in, they can't just overturn something willy nilly because they feel like it. They have to go through the same process of showing why the rule should be overturned, delayed, stayed, etc.
Scott Pruitt of the EPA basically got marching orders from Trump to do anything possible to revoke this rulemaking, and the arguments in court showed how flimsy that was. In order to delay implementation of a regulation (which is tantamount to retracting it, for the amount of time it is delayed), there must be good reason like evidence was ignored, people were not allowed to comment timely, etc.
None of these was found to be the case, and as a result, the EPA cannot just revoke an order it lawfully issued under the proper process. It can change its mind, but it has to go through the same process.
We should be thanking the rule of law for saving us from the administration's madness.
This is the problem with Obama-style rule-by-executive-dictate. When the executive can issue an order to his minions or his minions can use his authority to write the rules they choose, this can all later be undone in the same way by a new executive. That's why the proper way for Obama to have done any of this stuff (had he really given a damn) would have been to get congress to pass a bill he could sign into LAW.
This Obama regulation being replaced/altered by a Trump regulation is a no-brainer and the Supreme Court will eventually need about 2 seconds to think about it; the only reason it will take them longer is protocol: the supreme court likes to let things percolate in the lower courts to boild down the arguments and highlight the core points of contention before taking them on.
Of course, the fly in the ointment is that the courts have been so tainted by political hacks like Ruth buzzy Ginsburg who lack even a shred of concern for the actual text of the Constitution or any written laws that this will take many turns before it is settled. Back when judges agreed that laws meant what they said, we saw a lot less of this garbage of lower courts making purely partisan political preference rulings like those 9th circuit travel ban rulings. The left should really re-think a LOT of what they have been supporting - they would be terrified if our courts became loaded with right wing judges willing to make rulings on everything based purely on THEIR personal policy preferences in a mirror of what lefty judges have been doing for decades.
Methane has a much more powerful greenhouse effect the CO2. This is really bad news.
Oh for F's sake, SOMEONE on the interwebs thinks they define "clearly" and not the courts! Clearly the court said that the EPA head does NOT have this authority.
That was a pointless drivel of a post. No one said that later administrators can't undo previous work. They just have to do it within defined procedures. Even Congress has LOTS of procedures to undo previous Congress decisions. The speaker of the house just can't say "Obamacare repealed, Ryancare enforced."
Not sure if you are supporting the orignal poster but he does quite clearly state that the law can be revoked but you cannot just pull it out of circulation without going though due process. If you willing to kill of due process of anything because the new person in charge doesn't like X or Y then you really should look at the rise of fascism in Italy and their recent vote to stop the upper elected houses of their lawmakers being able to reduce due process. Before you jump on it no I dont think Trump would turn the USA into a fascist state, dont even think he is one either.
Well, Congress has the power to enact laws under the Constitution. This is how Congress allocated their power to unelected bureaucrats to write laws:
1. Congress enacted laws that delegated further rulemaking authority (with some guidance as to how to make those rules) to an agency, generally under the executive branch.
2. Congress enacted a law, the APA - the Administrative Procedure Act, that defines the rules and processes those agencies must follow to exercise their rulemaking authority. It lays out rules and procedures agencies have to follow, and rules that are adopted pursuant to those procedures then have the force of law. 3. Congress has also enacted other laws, allowing Congress to overturn a regulation on a simple majority vote expressing disapproval of that regulation, continuing to reserve the ability to undo those regulations.
So unelected bureaucrats have the power to write rules/regulations that have the force of law because Congress delegated that to them and let them do it.
As for regulators later being able to change the regulations, that's never been the issue. The judges noted that the administration can continue its rulemaking process to revise the methane rule. But what the administration cannot do is stay enforcement of the methane rule in the interim without a legal basis for doing so.
It is beyond irony that the party that claims to support law and order has no idea what these words actually mean. There is a lot more to our legal institutions then cops arresting people and throwing them in jail. Watching a "reality" show about cops on the beat and thinking you understand how the system works seems to be the level of stupidity that these comments express.
What these Republicans are actually describing is authoritarianism.
Why is Snark Required?
Wow, EVERY single argument you made is demonstrably wrong.
The EPA rulings were not in violation of "the laws on regulations."
This WAS an appeals court. It wasn't the "Ninth Court" (assuming you meant Ninth Circuit).
Regardless of what you think of this rule, the libtards in black robes are out of control and it is high time they start getting thrown out of office for this kind of crap. As a judge, you are required to rule on the law, not your personal opinions (as is clearly the case in this instance as well as the travel ban), and doing so in any situation should get you thrown off the bench permanently. Trumps travel ban was completely legal and the US SC will uphold it when they hear the case, but there will be no consequences for little fascists in black robes in Oregon, Hawii and Washington subverting the rule of the very laws they are sworn to uphold...
The reality is that gas/oil companies have always tried to prevent leaks, but if you want cheap energy, which is key for the US economy to function, you can't place massive fines on them every time two cow farts worth of natural gas escapes... For large leaks, there is already a financial incentive to prevent the leak, and for small discharges, it is inconsequential (methane is a NATURAL gas, it comes from a myriad of sources, including the mud baby you leave every time you squat on the toilet.)
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I actually support the idea of monitoring but it doesn't change the fact that the court broke the law. They literally have no such authority.
Courts have no authority to determine the implementation of any rule, unless that rule breaks the law. This rule, either way, does not break any law. As such, the court over stepped their constitutional authority. As such, are violating the constitutional rights of everyone involved.
If you don't like a law change it. If you don't like rules, change the rule makers. That's how it's done. That's the ONLY legal remedy available.
Judges like this need to be hanged so that we can once again become a country ruled by laws. If you want to argue that's illegal, we'll, that's the point. If we're going to ignore the highest laws of the land, we might as well ignore it to fix the country.
If Obama can implement rules on a whim, Trump can suspend them just as easily. I'm not arguing if the EPA rules are correct or not. I'm arguing for consistency.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The EPA's position was that the court that made this ruling did not have jurisdiction to take the case. So it's hard to imagine they're going to simply comply with the ruling.
Law enforcement is an executive branch responsibility. Ultimately, if the executive branch chooses not to enforce a law, with the president's approval, the only timely remedy is for Congress to impeach and remove the president, which simply isn't going to happen over this. This might seem like a dirty move, but it's absolutely business as usual in the US government and Obama did this kind of thing constantly.
Trump's "anti-environmentalism" is about bringing industry back to America from places like China. It's no environmental win to drive industry out of tightly-regulated countries into ones with lax and unenforced emission standards, so until the industry to supply America returns to America, credible arguments can't be made that relaxed environmental standards in America are a loss for the global environment. The first world isn't setting an example for the third world with ever-tightening regulations, it's driving dirty industry out to the third world, beyond the reach of any regulation.
First industry has to be brought back to America under globally competitive conditions, then trade with China has to be restricted (reversing the order of the first two steps would cause a shortage of goods and hardship for the American people), and only then can tightening of environmental regulations be practically considered.
3. Congress has also enacted other laws, allowing Congress to overturn a regulation on a simple majority vote expressing disapproval of that regulation, continuing to reserve the ability to undo those regulations.
So all the administration has to do is get a simple majority of Congress to vote to overturn the rule.
What's that? Congressmen don't want to go on the record voting to destroy the environment? Pity.
Nope, no sig
Just trying to clue in the earlier poster that there was an entirely different window through which to gaze upon this.
The simple fact is that our schools have been doing an appallingly bad job of educating people, particularly about US Govt, for decades now and there are a shocking number of adults who know do not have a clue about the limits of government power, the checks and balances between the branches, or even the propagation of that power within the branches. They simply have been raised in a land with a big bloated and frequently Constitutionally-questionable track record and they assume that anything a single bureaucrat (or several circuit court judges) says is LAW, rather than policy that is simply being upheld by government minions who follow orders until somebody stops them with a court order.
The Florida "Stand Your Ground" ruling within the past several days SHOULD freak-out ANY patriotic American...in it the judge proclaimed that only the courts had the right to make laws, not the legislature. Talk about an express elevator to hellish fascist tyranny under unelected elites! If the Florida legislature has a path to remove that judge and does not do it, Florida is in trouble, no matter WHAT your beliefs are on the merits of any aspect of the "Stand Your ground" laws.
EVERYBODY in the USA should be concerned when ANY part of the government operates extra-constitutionally, but we are coming off of 8 years where one side was celebrating the trashing of the Constitution as never before, and now they are in tears and are outraged as perfectly constitutional things are being done. We'd all be one hell of a lot better off and better able to deal with each other if the government went back to only doing the few things it is supposed to do and left the rest to us - this would get the politics out of everything, and as a bonus we'd all be much better at watchdogging the government and making sure it stayed within the lines because there'd be so much less of it to monitor. The government would also have fewer excuses for screwing up in its duties if it focused on the few things it actually was required to do and stopped trying to do every other ting under the sun.
Of course, for people to whom government is the new reilgion, this is all heresy... but the earlier poster seemed to not even get that there was another way to see all this junk.
Is it me, or are the courts actually ruling in favor of something positive for once?