Supreme Court deals blow to Biden EPA’s ozone emissions scheme

The Supreme Court temporarily blocked an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plan to limit ozone pollution that drifts across state lines on Thursday.

The court ruled to temporarily block the EPA’s “good neighbor” rule for ozone, which the agency originally intended to impose on 23 states via complex regulatory processes. The stay will remain in place as litigation over the rule plays out in lower courts.

The court decided to block the rule by a 5-4 vote, with Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elana Kagan dissenting. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s opinion and was joined in the majority by Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito.

Ohio v EPA by Nick Pope on Scribd

While the policy was originally slated to apply to 23 states, legal challenges effectively cut that number down to 11 states. Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia — the three states challenging the EPA in the case — argued that the EPA’s plans, if executed, would impose billions of dollars of costs and undermine power grid reliability by effectively mandating the closure of certain fossil fuel-power generation facilities, according to Bloomberg News.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has defended the rule on the grounds that it is a key tool for reducing air pollution and improving health outcomes for people who live in ozone pollution’s downwind path, according to Bloomberg. The rule was supposed to take effect in August 2023.

One of the key issues in the case is whether the agency sufficiently determined that its federal compliance plan still made sense, even if applied to a smaller number of states than originally intended, according to Bloomberg. The EPA is aiming to impose its federal compliance plan for the ozone “good neighbor” rule on the relevant states after it first rejected state-level plans.

“The EPA is disappointed in today’s ruling, which will postpone the benefits that the Good Neighbor Plan is already achieving in many states and communities. The Agency believes that the Good Neighbor Plan is firmly grounded in its Clean Air Act authority and looks forward to defending the merits of this vital public health protection before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Good Neighbor Plan is essential to ensure that states satisfy their responsibility under the Clean Air Act to address pollution that significantly contributes to unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone, or smog, in other states.”

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