EPA’s move to stop regulating pollution that causes climate change has opened the door for the nation’s highest bench to take a fresh look at a 19-year-old precedent that compelled the agency to control planet-warming emissions.
The agency’s Thursday repeal of the so-called endangerment finding for greenhouse gases — a scientific declaration that underpinned most federal curbs on climate pollution — purports to stay within the limits of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. But lawyers say it plainly contradicts the substance of the 2007 ruling.
“I don’t see how you can read this as anything other than a frontal assault on Mass v. EPA,” Ann Carlson, director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA, said of the repeal.
“The court has already ruled on the very question that the repeal of the endangerment finding is aimed at,” she said.
