The Supreme Court has turned down a chance to revive a long-dormant legal doctrine limiting the power Congress can hand off to federal regulators.
In an unexplained order issued Monday, the justices rejected a bid challenging an EPA rule that governs the phase-down of potent heat-trapping chemicals.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents a company that participates in refrigerant aftermarkets, asked the court in February to overturn a 2025 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that upheld EPA’s method of allocating companies’ production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. In making its argument to the justices, the alliance invoked the nondelegation doctrine, a legal theory that has gone unused since 1935 that says Congress cannot assign its legislative powers to executive agencies like EPA.
“The current nondelegation doctrine is broken, possibly beyond repair. This case showed that the D.C. Circuit — where many of the nation’s most important environmental cases must be litigated — is incapable of correctly applying the doctrine,” said Mark Chenoweth, president of the alliance, in a statement. “If the Supreme Court is not going to replace the doctrine, or at least attempt to repair it, then Congress needs to stop the injustice of requiring cases like this one to be decided exclusively in the D.C. Circuit.”
