The Supreme Court issued a landmark decision on Friday that will curb the power of the administrative state, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and President Biden's climate change policies are among the ruling's biggest losers.

In its decision in Roper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn a legal theory that gives more power to unelected bureaucrats. The court's decision to overturn the legal theory, known as Chevron deference, will have major implications for some of the Biden EPA's signature regulations and the agency's future direction, according to environmental law experts and former EPA officials who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The new legal environment could pose problems for the Biden administration's signature EPA rules, such as power plant emissions reduction rules and tailpipe standards that would aggressively shift the U.S. auto market to electric vehicles over the next decade.

Once one of the most important doctrines in administrative law, the Chevron doctrine holds that courts should generally defer to federal agency interpretations of statutory ambiguities. according to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP. Majority opinionChief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that Chevron was overruled and that “courts must exercise independent judgment in determining whether an agency acted within its statutory authority.” [Administrative Procedure Act (APA)] need.” (Related: Almost every left-wing group seems hell-bent on defending the administrative state.)

“Chevron was overruled,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “Courts must exercise independent judgment when determining whether an agency acted within its statutory authority. [Administrative Procedure Act] need.”Daily Caller https://t.co/xVnEjDV2Xm

— Caitlin Richardson (@katesrichardson) June 28, 2024

“The days of 'trust the experts' are over,” Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff during the Trump administration, told DCNF. “No doubt crafty administrative lawyers will try to get around this ruling, but the overturning of Chevron deference and the 'major issue' doctrine ruling in West Virginia v. EPA has undone the deep state. This is a major win for checks and balances, and puts faceless bureaucrats in their place.”

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in West Virginia v. EPA in June 2022, invalidating the Obama EPA's proposed 2015 sweeping power plant regulations, known as the Clean Power Plan. The ruling in that case found that the EPA overstepped its authority when issuing the Clean Power Plan, and that its policies raised “significant problems” that Congress did not expressly authorize the EPA to address. according to To the Congressional Research Service.

Other environmental law experts and veteran EPA officials also told DCNF that the new legal environment will deal a major blow to the agency's future authority.

“This ruling is very sweeping, as everyone expected,” Andrew Wheeler, a former EPA administrator under Trump, told DCNF. “Its impacts will be far-reaching and will hit certain agencies, particularly EPA, harder than others on a program-by-program basis, not a statute-by-statute basis.”

Wheeler said some tough regulations the EPA recently finalized could be scrapped in the new legal environment, including the agency's emissions limits for major power plants and tailpipe standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles that critics call an electric vehicle mandate.

“This is huge, and it's not just about Chevron. If you combine the West Virginia v. EPA ruling in June 2022 with this ruling overturning Chevron, it could potentially eliminate a lot of EPA regulations, illegal EPA regulations, it could potentially eliminate over-regulation,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environmental Law Institute and a former member of the Trump EPA transition team, told DCNF. “And when you add in that the Trump administration is running the EPA and the Department of Justice, companies will be able to petition the EPA and the Department of Justice, sue them and settle.”

But Milloy stressed that the Trump administration will need to navigate the new legislation carefully and strategically if its major push to deregulate the economy is to have any lasting success.

Environmental groups Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council The Free Market and Competitive Enterprise Institute and others strongly criticized the court's decision to overturn the Chevron ruling. American Petroleum Institute He praised the court for ending deference to Chevron and taking a major step in reining in the administrative state.

The EPA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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