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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.