| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | The globe. It is warming. EPA declines to make rules on greenhouse gases, in spite of a petition from MA to do so. |
| Posture: | Unclear. |
| Issue: | Does EPA have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases? If so, are their reasons for declining to do so consistent with the statute? Do the plaintiffs have the standing to sue? |
| Holding: | Yes. No. Yes. |
| Rule: | For standing: Lujan. For greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act. For whether EPA has complied with the statute, the "arbitrary and capricious" standard. |
| Reasoning: | The clean air act explicitly addresses any air pollutant that comes from motor vehicles. The fact that global warming causes oceans to rise is a real threat to MA, which has lots of low coastal land. Therefore, there is a particularized sort of injury that Lujan describes, and the state has standing. We're not saying that EPA has to rule here, but if they decline to, they must do so on the basis of the statute (i.e., they could claim there's not enough data for them to issue a rule). They don't have the discretion simply not to follow the statute's commands. |
| Dicta: | Roberts (dissenting): This is non-justiciable. Lujan recognized
that the redress of this sort of greivance was the function of
congress or the executive, not the courts. Also, it looks like
the petitioners' goal may be symbolic, and that means it's not
our bag.
Scalia (dissenting): The Clean Air Act doesn't say that the EPA has to rule, and besides, regulating this might have little effect on greenhouse gases, since the US will be a relatively small contributor compared with developing economies. |