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| Steam rises from the stakes of the coal-fired Jim Bridger Power Plant outside Point of the Rocks, Wyo., in 2014.
Credit
Jim Urquhart/Reuters |
WASHINGTON — In a major setback for President Obama’s climate change agenda, the Supreme Court
on Tuesday temporarily blocked the administration’s effort to combat
global warming by regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The brief order was not the last word on the case, which is most likely to return to the Supreme Court after an appeals court considers an expedited challenge from 29 states and dozens of corporations and industry groups.
But
the high court’s willingness to issue a stay while the case proceeds
was an early hint that the program could face a skeptical reception from
the justices.
The
5-to-4 vote, with the court’s four liberal members dissenting, was
unprecedented — the Supreme Court had never before granted a request to
halt a regulation before its legal fate had been decided.
“It’s a stunning development,” Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor and former environmental legal counsel to the Obama administration, said in an email. She added that “the order certainly indicates a high degree of initial judicial skepticism from five justices on the court,” and that the ruling would raise serious questions from nations that signed on to the landmark Paris climate change pact in December.
In negotiating that deal, which requires every country to enact policies to lower emissions, Mr. Obama pointed to the power plant rule as evidence that the United States would take ambitious action, and that other countries should follow.
“It’s a stunning development,” Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor and former environmental legal counsel to the Obama administration, said in an email. She added that “the order certainly indicates a high degree of initial judicial skepticism from five justices on the court,” and that the ruling would raise serious questions from nations that signed on to the landmark Paris climate change pact in December.
In negotiating that deal, which requires every country to enact policies to lower emissions, Mr. Obama pointed to the power plant rule as evidence that the United States would take ambitious action, and that other countries should follow.
Opponents of Mr. Obama’s climate policy called the court’s action historic.
“We
are thrilled that the Supreme Court realized the rule’s immediate
impact and froze its implementation, protecting workers and saving
countless dollars as our fight against its legality continues,” said
Patrick Morrisey, the attorney general of West Virginia, which has led
the 29-state legal challenge.
“There’s
a lot of people who are celebrating,” said Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer
with Bracewell & Giuliani, a firm representing energy companies,
which are party to the lawsuit. “It sends a pretty strong signal that
ultimately it’s pretty likely to be invalidated.”
The challenged regulation, which was issued last summer by the Environmental Protection Agency,
requires states to make major cuts to greenhouse gas pollution created
by electric power plants, the nation’s largest source of such emissions.
The plan could transform the nation’s electricity system, cutting
emissions from existing power plants by a third by 2030, from a 2005
baseline, by closing hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired plants and
increasing production of wind and solar power.
“Climate
change is the most significant environmental challenge of our day, and
it is already affecting national public health, welfare and the
environment,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. wrote in a brief
urging the Supreme Court to reject a request for a stay while the case
moves forward.
The
regulation calls for states to submit plans to comply with the
regulation by September, though they may seek a two-year extension. The
first deadline for power plants to reduce their emissions is in 2022,
with full compliance not required until 2030.
The
states challenging the regulation, led mostly by Republicans and many
with economies that rely on coal mining or coal-fired power, sued to
stop what they called “the most far-reaching and burdensome rule the
E.P.A. has ever forced onto the states.”
A
three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit in January unanimously refused to grant a
stay.
The court did expedite the case and will hear arguments on June 2, which is fast by the standards of complex litigation.
The
states urged the Supreme Court to take immediate action to block what
they called a “power grab” under which “the federal environmental
regulator seeks to reorganize the energy grids in nearly every state in
the nation.” Though the first emission reduction obligations do not take
effect until 2022, the states said they had already started to spend
money and shift resources to get ready.
Eighteen states,
mostly led by Democrats, opposed the request for a stay, saying they
were “continuing to experience climate-change harms firsthand —
including increased flooding, more severe storms, wildfires and
droughts.” Those harms are “lasting and irreversible,” they said, and
“any stay that results in further delay in emissions reductions would
compound the harms that climate change is already causing.”
In
a second filing seeking a stay, coal companies and trade associations
represented by Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said the
court should act to stop a “targeted attack on the coal industry” that
will “artificially eliminate buyers of coal, forcing the coal industry
to curtail production, idle operations, lay off workers and close
mines.”
The
E.P.A., represented by Mr. Verrilli, called the requests for a stay
“extraordinary and unprecedented.” The states challenging the
administration’s plan, he said, could point to no case in which the
Supreme Court had “granted a stay of a generally applicable regulation
pending initial judicial review in the court of appeals.” In a later
brief, the states conceded that point.
Mr.
Verrilli said judicial review of the plan, including by the Supreme
Court, will be complete before the first deadline for emissions
reductions in 2022.
“There
is no reason to suppose that states’ duties under the rule will be
especially onerous,” Mr. Verrilli wrote. “A state can elect not to
prepare a plan at all, but instead may allow E.P.A. to develop and
implement a federal plan for sources in that state.”
The
two sides differed about whether current declines in coal mining and
coal-fired power generation are attributable to the administration’s
plan. “Some of the nation’s largest coal companies have declared
bankruptcy, due in no small part to the rule,” a group of utilities told
the justices.
Mr. Tribe added that the plan “will cause the closure of 53 coal-fired plants in 2016 and another three in 2018.”
A coalition of environmental groups and companies that produce and rely on wind and solar power said other factors were to blame for coal’s decline.
“These
changes include the abundant supply of relatively inexpensive natural
gas, the increasing cost-competitiveness of electricity from renewable
generation sources such as solar and wind power, the deployment of
low-cost energy efficiency and other demand-side measures, and
increasing consumer demand for advanced energy, as well as the rising
costs of coal production and the high costs of maintaining very old
coal-fired plants,” they wrote.
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