Court’s Changes Threatens Climate Fight

Kennedy’s Retirement Could Clear Path for Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks

Brad Plumer, June 28, 2018 (NY Times)

“The retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy from the Supreme Court could significantly reshape environmental law in the decades ahead and potentially make it easier for the Trump administration to roll back Obama-era climate change policies in the coming years…In his 30 years on the court, Justice Kennedy was frequently a crucial swing vote on major environmental questions. While he tended to be skeptical of expansive federal regulations that intruded on private property rights, he was also willing to break with the court’s conservative wing in favor of more aggressive government action to limit air and water pollution…

Perhaps most notably, in 2007, he sided with the court’s four liberal justices in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency to rule that the E.P.A. had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That case laid the groundwork for many of the Obama administration’s major climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants…It is far from certain that a new court would quickly overturn Massachusetts v. E.P.A. and take away the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases altogether, legal experts said. The court has already upheld that ruling twice in subsequent cases, and, during oral arguments in 2014, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. indicated that he considered the case an established precedent…” click here for more

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