SCOTUS resuscitates challenge to Calif. emission rules

Producers of gasoline and ethanol fuels have Article III standing to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency‘s approval of California regulations requiring automakers to limit average greenhouse-gas emissions across their vehicle fleets and manufacture a certain percentage of electric vehicles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in reversing a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Click here to read the full text of the June 20 decision in Diamond Alternative Energy v. Environmental Protection Agency.

• “To deny standing based on a theory that invalidating an important regulation would actually have zero impact on a dynamic and heavily regulated market requires a degree of economic and political clairvoyance that is difficult for a court to maintain. That is particularly so when the government regulation itself may be skewing the market at issue. So courts should exercise caution before denying standing because of a claimed lack of redressability rooted in questionable economic speculation. …
  “In sum, this case does not present the unusual scenario where invalidating a challenged government restriction on businesses in a competitive market is not likely to have any effect. Here, it may not be certain, but it is at least ‘predictable’ that invalidating the California regulations would likely result in the fuel producers ultimately selling more gasoline and other liquid fuels.”
  — Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, opinion of the court

• “Having granted certiorari, the Court relegates to a footnote the actual basis for the D.C. Circuit’s decision [which was based on an apparent misunderstanding about when the California fleet-wide emissions standards expire]. A version of that footnote should have been the Court’s entire opinion in this case. For reasons unknown, the majority instead conjures up a ‘heightened “proof of redressability” requirement’ that the D. C. Circuit did not adopt and that no party advanced, and then laboriously ‘decline[s] to adopt’ that requirement. I see no need to expound on the law of standing in a case where the sole dispute is a factual one not addressed below. Indeed, as JUSTICE JACKSON explains, this case is unlikely to present a live controversy for much longer regardless of petitioners’ standing, as the administration is likely to withdraw the challenged rules. I would simply have vacated the case and remanded it to the D.C. Circuit to reconsider its redressability analysis, keeping in mind the now corrected timeline for the challenged vehicle-emissions programs.”
  — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting

• “In my view, we should have either denied certiorari outright or held this matter in abeyance pending EPA‘s reconsideration of its waiver grant. Barring that, we should have simply vacated and remanded for the D. C. Circuit to reconsider its ruling on a clarified factual record.…
  “The Court’s remarkably lenient approach to standing in this case contrasts starkly with the stern stance it has taken in cases concerning the rights of ordinary citizens. Here, the Court’s ‘commonsense’ inferences readily align with the fuel industry’s assertions of economic injury, even in the face of conflicting evidence. But for less wealthy individual plaintiffs, establishing redressability to the Court’s satisfaction is often harder to come by.”
  — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting