Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#451

Post by kevin_b_er » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #250

40acres wrote: post #168

I really don't understand the decision. In my mental model the executive branch exists to implement the laws that Congress passes, Congress deliberately leaves leeway in laws to give the executive branch flexibility, this flexibility has been previously affirmed by the court decision Chevron v. NRDC. This decision seems to give more power to Congress but on net I think it makes the laws Congress passes weaker because…

You have to know the actual motivation: The point is to limit the administrative state and move power to congress (as you said), because federal rule making is relatively open, and the administration has experts. If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the expertise to actually write technical regulations. This is a win for industry.

This is a win for corruption.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#452

Post by davidw » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

gsibble wrote: post #371

davidw wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old enough to remember when I could grudgingly accept that there was some wisdom in decisions I disagreed with, even if perhaps not enough to sway me. But I could see something argued intelligently. This is just nakedly partisan stuff going on. I think viewing it through that lens - "we're going to do what we want because it fits our politics" - makes the most sense.

Highly disagree. All of the recent decisions make perfect legal sense, this coming from the son of a Constitutional attorney who has described to me the rulings, reasons behind them, precedents, etc.. And he's a pro-choice, anti-gun Democrat. He still agrees with the legal decisions. I read the rulings myself too and they make total sense given what I've learned over decades of listening to him.

They're pretty much at the point of flat out lying about things, like the prayer case. Sotomayor, in her dissent, included actual photographs of the coach huddling/praying with the whole team, which is quite coercive behavior. It wasn't a 'quiet prayer'.

https://twitter.com/cristianafarias/status/15414273388266291...

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#453

Post by willis936 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

nitsky wrote: post #373

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #326

It's not clear to me if the court has ruled broadly regarding delegation here (we still need experts to read through the entire ruling), but they've clearly indicated that they believe that delegation is not okay with them. Which basically means that this court will reduce the Federal government to a non-entity very soon, making its functioning absolutely impossible. That may even be "constitutionally" correct (altho…

> That may even be "constitutionally" correct... but it makes the US completely incapable of operating in the modern world. The Constitution was designed to be amended to adapt to a changing world. Let's amend it! However, it is the role of the Supreme Court to apply what the Constitution DOES say, not decide what it SHOULD say.

No post body was provided.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#454

Post by xxpor » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

fooey wrote: post #380

xxpor wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to know the actual motivation: The point is to limit the administrative state and move power to congress (as you said), because federal rule making is relatively open, and the administration has experts. If it moves to congress, they'll just take the legislation lobbyists hand them and pass it, because they don't have the expertise to actually write technical regulations. This is a win for industry.

Congress doesn't remotely have the bandwidth to explicitly write out and decide all the little rules it takes to regulate the country, even if they had a clue what they were doing in each case It's pretty clearly designed to dismantle the federal regulatory apparatus

That's exactly correct.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#455

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #398

ceejayoz wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even if you believe that a given law is good - that women should have an inalienable right to an abortion, or that there should be tight controls on who can carry a weapon, or whatever - you've got to recognize that sometimes the Constitution does not give the government the power to make that happen. It does, though, via the Ninth Amendment, which explicitly notes that the Constitution is not an exhaustive lis…

There's an argument to be made there, but it's most certainly NOT "explicit". The 9th does say that there are other rights, that's pretty much its whole point. But it absolutely does not "explicitly" mention abortion or anything else. You also ignored my example of 2A, or the current controversy (for which I haven't yet read the argument, but I assume that the 10th Amendment plays into it in exactly the same way you'…

It is explicit in the Constitution that people have rights not listed in it. Those unenumerated rights are, by their nature, not listed, but I find it hard to credit the idea that Americans don't have a right to privacy.

> You also ignored my example of 2A

Sure, because everyone does. The number of people arguing bans on personal ownership of nuclear arms are unconstitutional is... small. Even originalist/textualists seem to agree it's by no means absolute.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#456

Post by heretogetout » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

PathOfEclipse wrote: post #301

40acres wrote: post #168

I really don't understand the decision. In my mental model the executive branch exists to implement the laws that Congress passes, Congress deliberately leaves leeway in laws to give the executive branch flexibility, this flexibility has been previously affirmed by the court decision Chevron v. NRDC. This decision seems to give more power to Congress but on net I think it makes the laws Congress passes weaker because…

Quoted post unavailable.

Your citation doesn't entirely support your argument. The court said "[vast] economic and political significance." This seems like a power grab by the court because now they and they alone can decide what has "vast significance," not the legislature and not the executive.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#457

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

rlewkov wrote: post #415

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #326

It's not clear to me if the court has ruled broadly regarding delegation here (we still need experts to read through the entire ruling), but they've clearly indicated that they believe that delegation is not okay with them. Which basically means that this court will reduce the Federal government to a non-entity very soon, making its functioning absolutely impossible. That may even be "constitutionally" correct (altho…

An attorney friend of mine summarized it by saying that the Supreme Court said it's OK for the EPA to dictate particular emission levels for power plants but not OK to require a plant to change it's method of power generation.

So CO2=0 would be legit? That seems against the spirit / motivation of the court at present moment. My third-hand impression was that they ruled that regulating CO2 at all was outside their responsibilities.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#458

Post by dsr_ » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

zionic wrote: post #317

nooyurrsdey wrote: post #282

Emphasis mine: > The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf of 18 other mostly Republican-led states and some of the nation's largest coal companies. > > They were challenging whether the agency has the power to regulate planet-warming emissions for state-wide power sectors or just individual power plants. > > These 19 states were worried their power sectors would be regulated and they would be f…

Well the fix here is for Congress to pass a specific law empowering the EPA with explicit authority. If something like that can't make it through congress then it isn't democratic, and the task then becomes one of convincing the other side. I've the had the anti-coal conversation with plenty of conservatives and they were all open to my point of view. Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy, even if i…

You've almost got it, but you need to go one step further.

Congress isn't democratic. Congress is overly concentrated.

To begin with, the Senate is absurdly anti-democratic. The 710K residents of Washington, DC don't get a vote there at all. The 600K residents of Wyoming get the same 2 votes as Vermont (620K) and California (39 million). Anything that says that Texas and West Virginia are equal to each other in some mystical sense of having equal weight in decisions that affect the whole country is an ideology not compatible with democracy.

Then, the House of Representatives is (a) absurdly gerrymandered and (b) absurdly undersized. One rep per 750,000 people on average, up from one rep per 210,000 people in 1909 and up from one per 34,000 in 1800.

Any Constitutional "originalist" who thinks that the House of Representatives is just fine at 435 reps is a hypocrite. At one per 34,000, we need about ten thousand reps to meet the standards of representation that the founders thought was reasonable.

Oddly, that would solve the other major problem with the House of Representatives: the 2 year term is fine if the rep only has to persuade the majority of 34,000 people or so. A small campaign can win. A simple requirement that all districts must be compact, convex and allocated according to a geographic/population algorithm would cure the gerrymandering, too.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#459

Post by thepasswordis » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

pylon wrote: post #410

thepasswordis wrote: post #314

Good. I have to say that, as an anti-authoritarian, conservative advocate of individual liberty, this last week has been extremely inspiring. To those who are confused about how the system in the US works: the court has basically decreased their own power with some of these decisions. That’s the type of thing that should give everybody, regardless of affiliation, hope about the future.

Making it easier for states to ban abortion is good for individual liberty?

The court self limiting their own power, and pushing it down to an democratically elected body (the congress) is good for individual liberty.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#460

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #445

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that we will adapt and Congress just needs to adjust to a hostile Supreme Court and legislate more. People need to vote.

Yeah, they're ahead of you on that one. Already zapped the Voting Rights Act and ruled that gerrymandering is legal. They're pretty competent at setting up the doom loop for Democracy - that and cutting taxes for the wealthy.

Adapt and overcome. I'm against panic and FUD.