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Daniel Farber | March 28, 2024

The New EPA Car Rule Doesn’t Violate the Major Questions Doctrine

In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The heart of the ruling was that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had engaged in a power grab, basing an unprecedented expansion of its regulatory authority on an obscure provision of the statute. Conservative groups have claimed since then that virtually every government regulation raises a major question. But the doctrine cannot be read that broadly. In particular, the doctrine does not apply to the emission standards for cars that EPA issued last week. As EPA explains in its prologue to the rule, the car standard is very different from the Clean Power Plan.

Sophie Loeb | March 27, 2024

North Carolina Needed an Emissions Reduction Plan. They Asked a Utility Company to Create It.

Today, the Center for Progressive Reform is publishing a new policy brief. Missing the Mark: How North Carolina’s Decarbonization Efforts Fall Short and How to Fix Them examines the pitfalls of North Carolina’s decarbonization plan (known as the Carbon Plan and developed by Duke Energy) and alternative models to address those shortcomings.

Daniel Farber | March 26, 2024

Chevron Gets the Headlines, But State Farm May Be More Important

The Chevron doctrine requires judges to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute if that interpretation is reasonable. The State Farm case, which is much less widely known, requires courts to defer to an agency’s expert judgment unless its reasoning has ignored contrary evidence or has a logical hole. As you probably already know, two cases now before the Court will probably result in abandoning or revamping Chevron. But the “abortion pill” case that will be argued today will test the Court’s adherence to State Farm. Will the conservative Justices stand by State Farm even when doing so expands access to abortion?

Federico Holm | March 25, 2024

What Three Ohio Counties Can Tell Us About a Major Obstacle to Our Clean Energy Future

My colleagues at the Center for Progressive Reform and I recently published a report and interactive map examining how local ordinances that restrict clean energy development can impose major obstacles in our efforts toward a just clean energy transition. Among the many important findings in our report, we highlighted the high degree of variability that exists between states in the way large-scale clean energy generation is regulated. In some cases, like Illinois and Michigan, governments have empowered state authorities to override local siting measures; other states have given local governments more decision-making powers to decide if and how renewable infrastructure can be built. Among the latter is Ohio.

air pollution

Victor Flatt | March 14, 2024

Op-ed: Whether the Government Requires It or Not, Greenhouse Gas Disclosures Are Here to Stay 

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its long-awaited final rule requiring publicly traded companies to report certain climate risks and greenhouse gas emissions as part of their financial risk disclosures.

James Goodwin | March 5, 2024

The Ideological Warfare Behind the Attack on Chevron Deference: Part 3

As discussed in yesterday’s post, the contemporary conservative movement is prepared to use legal battles over esoteric administrative law doctrines, such as Chevron deference, as a tool of ideological warfare. Importantly, though, these battles present progressives with a great opportunity to engage at the ideological level as well. After all, progressives have been busy developing their own competing vision of what our constitutional democracy should look like. They should seize the opportunity presented by the fight over Chevron deference’s future to articulate and advance that vision.

James Goodwin | March 4, 2024

The Ideological Warfare Behind the Attack on Chevron Deference: Part 2

In Part 1 of this three-part series, I introduced the rapidly boiling legal battle over a once-obscure administrative law doctrine known as Chevron deference. Much of the commentary to this point has focused on the political motivations behind the conservative attack on Chevron deference. In this second post, I will take a closer look at how conservatives have carefully crafted this battle (and their broader war on the administrative state) to promote their distinctive brand of ideological thought.

James Goodwin | March 4, 2024

The Ideological Warfare Behind the Attack on Chevron Deference: Part 1

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a pair of related cases — Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce — which could be among the most consequential decisions for U.S. democracy that the Court has ever issued. That’s because the cases urge the Court to overturn a longstanding judicial doctrine called Chevron deference. Over the last 40 years, that doctrine has provided a practical framework for mediating the growing separation-of-powers fights among the three branches for control over administrative agencies, with the preservation of the administrative state’s essential democratic foundation as its guiding star.

Robert Fischman | February 29, 2024

A Proposal to Leverage More Conservation Benefits from National Wildlife Refuges

How should the United States manage the largest biodiversity conservation system to be greater than the sum of its parts? This vexing question for the national wildlife refuges has received scant attention for the past quarter century. Now the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Service), which administers the refuge system, has proposed a rule to guide specific refuge decisions to ensure they contribute to a national network rather than incrementally fray the web of conservation.