High Court Accepts EPA Global Warming Cases, Including SELF/CEI Petition

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — The Supreme Court announced today it would review EPA’s massive set of greenhouse gas regulations for stationary sources. The Court granted six petitions for certiorari, which had been filed by a wide range of trade associations, public interest groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, states, individual companies and legislators. CEI is a co-petitioner in one of these cases, Southeastern Legal Foundation et al. v. EPA, as are FreedomWorks and the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

The Supreme Court’s decision means it will re-examine a June 2012 D.C. Circuit Court decision that upheld what is known as EPA’s “endangerment” finding—the process by which it determines which substances are a danger to public health and thus subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The full D.C. Circuit later voted not to rehear the case, but two judges issued powerful dissents in favor of rehearing.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to grant cert will, we hope, ultimately put the brakes on EPA’s unprecedented regulatory barrage of global warming rules,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.

“This agency has been acting as if it had a green light to destroy the American economy to prevent the alleged threat of catastrophic global warming. But for 17 years, nature hasn’t cooperated with EPA’s climate models, and now the Supreme Court may not cooperate with EPA’s climate jurisprudence.”

Southeastern Legal Foundation and CEI argued in their brief that EPA had grabbed “jurisdiction over a breadth of human activity unparalleled in the history of American governance.”