Decisions, Decisions: How The Supreme Court Is Decimating Our Democracy One Decision At A Time

 Today, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Clean Air Act didn't apply to carbon dioxide and therefore can't be regulated by the EPA. “Hard on the heels of snatching away fundamental liberties, the right-wing activist court just curtailed vital climate action,” Jason Rylander, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, responded in a press statement Thursday. The court ruled that only Congress can make laws regarding the level of CO2 emissions. Interestingly the case came to the court due to then-president Trump trying to relax the guidelines which a federal court put a hold on. The result of this ruling is likely to create a free-for-all among states who want to loosen the law versus those who wish to strengthen it. In the meanwhile, global climate change continues and temperatures and sea levels are rising. “Today, the court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the minority joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent.

The decision is impactful to the EPA's ability to do its job. Whether it is limiting emissions from power plants to operating the existing cap-and-trade carbon offset policy, it may also give a peek into other backward steps the court and its conservative majority likely will take. “Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by the five other conservative justices. Further, he added, “On EPA’s view of Section 111(d), Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in the basic regulation of how Americans get their energy,” Roberts wrote. “There is little reason to think Congress did so.” In instances like this, he said, “[a] decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.” 

Regardless of this decision, the Environmental Protection Agency was formed to serve as the watchdog over the nation's environment and enact policies to preserve it, but you would think that this was some kind of fly-by-night operation that requires Congress to hold its hand to do its job. Also, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are a little difficult to maintain when the court is treating people like the frogs in the warm water experiment. Suffice to say, with the slew of recent decisions that have been handed down by this court, democracy as we know it is likely to fail us. It would seem like nobody can wrestle the steering wheel away from these unelected lifers, but the court could be expanded to lessen their impact.