With its repeal of the endangerment finding last week, the Trump administration cast aside scientific understanding that was endorsed by past Republican presidents and underwritten by Supreme Court precedent, an environmental lawyer said Thursday.
Vickie Patton, who started her career at EPA under former President George H.W. Bush, said in remarks to an audience of environmental attorneys that the Trump administration’s decision to erase the scientific underpinning for federal climate rules is a stunning turn from the agency’s long-standing approach to “follow the science, follow the economics, follow the law” — no matter who was in the White House.
She said the move flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which found that the agency has authority to regulate planet-warming emissions as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The ruling prompted EPA to codify its endangerment finding in 2009, determining that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health.
Patton, now general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund, underscored that the majority opinion in Massachusetts was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by former Republican President Gerald Ford.
