Reining In Bureaucrats

Yesterday, I wrote about West Virgina v. EPA, a case challenging the ability of EPA bureaucrats to write “law.” If the states won, the precedent would be great news for those challenging the ATF’s propensity for pretending to be Congress.

We won. In a 6-3 opinion, Roberts wrote:

Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan.
[…]
This is a major questions case. EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute designed as a gap filler.
[…]
Given that precedent counsels skepticism toward EPA’s claim that Section 111 empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach, the Government must point to “clear congressional authorization” to regulate in that manner.
[…]
But the only question before the Court is more narrow: whether the “best system of emission reduction” identified by EPA in the Clean Power Plan was within the authority granted to the Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. For the reasons given, the answer is no.

The bump-fire stock ban, with its redefinition of “manual operation of the trigger comes immediately to mind.

 

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