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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.
Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the EPA, was appointed by President Donald Trump. So yes, in this case POTUS controls the EPA and many other aspects of the U.S. Government.. (this should not come as a surprise, but maybe you're an idiot)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
From the decision:
Like you said, there's a process, and the court didn't think that the EPA was following it.
The methane rule, along with many other administrative regulations, are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA, for short). The APA is the law, enacted in 1946, that governs how administrative agencies of the federal government can propose and establish any regulation they are empowered to create. For rulemaking (writing or changing regulations), it requires notice, public participation, agency response and feedback, and a permanent record of the rulemaking activity itself. All of that had to be done for the methane rule to be adopted by the EPA. It was adopted, and Congress had a chance to overturn the regulation, and it decided not to (a vote to overturn the regulation failed in the Senate).
The Trump administration's EPA doesn't want to enforce the methane rule, but they have to now. It is the law. So what the EPA tried to do is stay it (prevent enforcement) while they went through the rulemaking process of trying to get rid of it. And various groups sued because the EPA did not have a legal basis to stay enforcement while the rule is being reconsidered. And the Court agreed. While the EPA could appeal this ruling, their possibility of success is slim. There aren't enough votes on the DC Circuit to overturn the panel opinion and rehear the case en banc, and the odds of the Supreme Court hearing the case are minimal. The opinion is a pretty straightforward application of the APA to the case.
So while the EPA is going through the rulemaking process to get rid of the methane rule, they will have to enforce it in the meanwhile, and it is not entirely clear that the result of a new rulemaking would be repeal of the methane rule, due to the notice, public participation, and comment parts of the rulemaking process.
President Obama would have been happy to enforce the methane rule, as would 51 US Senators in the current Congress, apparently. It's not a dick move to enact laws and regulations you believe in, no matter how misguided they may be. People have sincere differences of opinion on policy, and engaging in the legislative and administrative processes to change those policies are part of our democratic system. The real dick move was by Scott Pruitt, when he tried to stay enforcement of a regulation without having the legal authority to do so.
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.
Because the EPA has to follow the Administrative Procedure Act if it wants to NOT implement a rule it has already adopted. And the EPA didn't do so.
This ruling won't be overturned: not enough votes to overturn en banc, and it's not a case the Supremes will have interest in.
It won't get overturned on appeal. There aren't enough votes at the DC Circuit to overturn this opinion en banc, and I doubt the Supreme Court will want to hear it.
This is a case about the Administrative Procedure Act, about the rule of law. It is not about any lack of democracy. As the Court opinion pointed out, the EPA can engage in the rulemaking process to change or eliminate the rule it adopted. It just can't lawlessly fail to enforce the rule it adopted in the meanwhile.
This is governed by the Administrative Procedures Act, which has specific judicially-enforceable rules about the manner in which the agencies can make rules. Among the more mundane requirements of the APA are things like public notice-and-comment periods. More germanely to the instant case, is that if an agency has formally adopted a rule (with all the rigmarole that goes with it, the agency cannot just turn around and repeal it a good reason. And even if it does, it must go through some of the same procedures.
Part of the motivation for this process is practical: regulated industries ought to have stability in the rules and it's needlessly inefficient to be churning them all the time. That is to say, even if the rule is unfavorable to a particular company, it's better to be able to know and plan than to be facing constant uncertainty. At the same time, part of the motivation is political: Congress sought to limit the Executive branch as part of its prerogative -- a President of either party that can either instantly adopt or repeal new rules would upend the balance of power.
So yeah, the EPA doesn't have authority under the APA to start implementing something contrary to the formal rule that they have adopted.
The creation of new rules has a well-defined process, outlined in the Constitution. The abolishment of old rules also has a process. The court simply ruled that Pruitt has to follow it.
No, the Court is ruling on the EPA failing to obey a law called the Administrative Procedure Act. That's the law that lets administrative agencies create regulations under the authority delegated to them by Congress. Those rules/regulations, when properly adopted under the procedures of the APA, then have the force of law, and are essentially laws themselves.
And under the APA, Congress granted jurisdiction to the Courts to review agency action on these rules. So the courts have nowhere overstepped their authority in this case. They issued a ruling on a current law: the methane rule was validly adopted by the EPA following the procedures of the APA. The only person who overstepped their authority was Scott Pruitt, current EPA administrator, who had no legal basis for issuing a stay of that rule.
And you're completely wrong about this. Agency regulations are, for the most part, governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, the APA. Agencies, like the EPA, have to follow the procedures set out in the APA to write or change regulations they are empowered to create. It isn't at the whim of the current Administration, though administrations do have a lot of control over the process.
The methane rule was adopted by the EPA pursuant to the Clean Air Act, and followed the procedures of the APA for notice, public participation, and comment. It is a validly adopted regulation. It cannot be changed at the will of any administration - a change will require another rulemaking process under the APA, with notice, public participation, and comment. Which the Trump administration has started. That they can do.
But while that rulemaking process is under way, they have no legal basis to delay or stay implementation and enforcement of the rule that was adopted. That's what the case was about. Not about being able to change the rule, but about not enforcing the rule while it is being reconsidered. And the judges did not overstep their bounds at all, since the APA gives them jurisdiction to consider these kinds of disputes.
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.
Scott Pruitt is the poster child for why we need to get money out of politics. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
You can't really back that assumption up.
It's not an assumption, it's an estimate based on my previous 10 years of studying the Supreme Court. So I'll back it up.
If the Supreme Court of the United States (not the "Supremes" you idiot) chooses to take this case, will you come back here and admit you didn't know what you were talking about?
If the Supreme Court Justices decide to take an interest in the case, I'll certainly have to reevaluate my opinion, but I don't see 4 votes for granting a cert petition. The opinion relies on settled administrative law. None of it is particularly controversial. And while Chief Justice Roberts has shown an interest in reshaping the Court's administrative law jurisprudence, much of that reshaping has more to do with limiting deference to agency decisions than with the other issues at play in this case. The questions that could be appealed would either be about whether the court had jurisdiction to hear the case, which has been settled law for the past 40 years (delaying a rule's effective date is tantamount to revoking or amending the rule, constituting a final agency action that can be reviewed by the court), or that the stay was lawful - a much harder thing to justify, since the statute the administration cites (42 U.S.C. 7607(d)(7)(B)) allows only a 90 day stay during reconsideration, and only under certain circumstances, far shorter than the two year stay the Trump administration wanted the put in place.
Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg would not vote to grant cert in this instance, and while Justices Roberts and Kennedy have doubts about the administrative state, it is more along questions of deference to agency decisions, not questions of statutory interpretation or judicial power to review agency action. I am not certain that even Justice Thomas, strict textualist that he is, would vote to grant cert in this case. You need four votes to grant cert, and 5 to overturn. And the justices can count - most won't vote to grant cert unless they think they can get the fifth vote to overturn the lower court decision.
But I could be wrong, and have been in the past. I don't think that's the case here, however.
They have taken up a wide variety of cases that challenge federal law, and this is certainly one that qualifies. On the other hand, if there is enough jurisprudence on the APA already they will let the lower court ruling stand.
There is an entire body of jurisprudence on the APA built up through the past 70 years that makes up most of administrative law.
Unless they find good reason that this rule may be overturned if the EPA overstepped its authority.
Except that wasn't what this case was about. No one in the case argued that the EPA overstepped its authority. The methane rule was promulgated under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes the EPA to issue technology based standards which apply to specific categories of stationary sources of air pollution. No one is challenging the methane rule on that basis, because the EPA does have the authority under the Clean Air Act to issue it.
The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts are very clear about what the EPA can do - capriciously adding items that some administrations consider pollutants like CO2 and NG may violate those Acts.
And here, the Clean Air Act was very clear. The oil and natural gas industry is a source category for which the EPA is required to issue standards of performance. Prior standards already in place covered the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The standard was updated to include methane. This was not a capricious addition: methane leaks very often coincide with leaks of VOCs that produce air toxics like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, and stopping methane leaks will prevent VOC leaks, and in general,