In EPA Supreme Court case, the agency’s power to combat climate change hangs in the balance

The case over carbon pollution from power plants ‘could well become one of the most significant environmental law cases of all time,’ one legal scholar says

President Biden’s ambitious plans to combat climate change, blocked by an uncooperative Congress, face an equally tough test next week at the Supreme Court. With the court’s conservative justices increasingly suspicious that agencies are overstepping their powers, the case’s outcome could not only reshape U.S. environmental policy but also call into question the authority of regulators to tackle the nation’s most pressing problems.

On Monday, the court takes up a years-long challenge from coal-mining companies and Republican-led states contesting the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to mandate sweeping changes to the way the nation’s power sector produces electricity, the nation’s second-largest source of climate-warming pollution.

REPOSTED FROM THE WASHINGTON POST – READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Image Depicts Trains filled with coal near the Dry Fork Station energy plant in Gillette, Wyo., in November 2021. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)