The US Supreme Court Decision The Media Won't Cover
The mainstream media complex has shifted into high gear in its far-Left, ideologically anointed, social engineering propaganda campaign on the issue of the US Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Regardless of the fact the ruling did not outlaw abortion but instead returned the purview of the matter to the individual states (as was that authority’s proper place), it is the narrative being shopped, egregiously wrong as it is. That narrative shopping also diverted attention from a much more critical and far-reaching ruling.
In the matter of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to craft transformative regulatory powers under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act.
In a nutshell, the SCOTUS ruling stated that the EPA overstepped its authority by taking advantage of vague language in the Clean Air Act to craft and implement emissions regulations that constituted “generation shifting,” or in plain English, a regulatory move to force existing power generating plants to renewable energy (green energy). This move would have decimated the existing energy sector because of the costs associated with the generation shift. It would have also deprived the people of the United States of the present level of efficiency offered in the existing power grid.
Just A Taste Of Constitutional Justice
In the decision, SCOTUS ruled in part:
“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...
“Precedent teaches that there are ‘extraordinary cases’ in which the ‘history and the breadth of the authority that [the EPA] has asserted,’ and the ‘economic and political significance’ of that assertion, provide a ‘reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress’ meant to confer such authority...Under [the] body of law, known as the major questions doctrine, given both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent, the agency must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for the authority it claims...
“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. That discovery allowed it to adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously declined to enact itself. Given these circumstances, there is every reason to ‘hesitate before concluding that Congress’ meant to confer on EPA the authority it claims under Section 111(d)...
“...the Agency nodded to the novelty of its approach when it explained that it was pursuing a ‘broader, forward-thinking approach to the design’ of Section 111 regulations that would ‘improve the overall power system,’ rather than the emissions performance of individual sources, by forcing a shift throughout the power grid from one type of energy source to another. This view of EPA’s authority was not only unprecedented; it also effected a ‘fundamental revision of the statute, changing it from [one sort of] scheme of...regulation’ into an entirely different kind...
“...this Court doubts that ‘Congress ...intended to delegate...decision[s] of such economic and political significance,’ i.e., how much coal-based generation there should be over the coming decades, to any administrative agency. Nor can the Court ignore that the regulatory writ EPA newly uncovered in Section 111(d) conveniently enabled it to enact a program, namely, cap-and-trade for carbon, that Congress had already considered and rejected numerous times...
“...the Government must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ to regulate in that manner.”
It is a critical ruling offering much more detail in even its summary than can be outlined here. I urge everyone to read it and to consume what it says with a critical eye.
The Ruling’s Shot Across The Bow
This ruling constitutes a shot across the bow to the Executive Branch departments, agencies, and commissions that, today, wield extraordinarily overreaching regulatory power divined through poorly worded and purposely vague legislative language. This loosely written legislation – such as the Clean Air Act – allows Executive Branch departments and agencies to regulate with the power of law. This violates the Separation of Powers.
The Separation of Powers is explained by the Cornell School of Law’s Legal Information Institute as:
“...a doctrine of constitutional law under which the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) are kept separate. This is also known as the system of checks and balances because each branch is given certain powers so as to check and balance the other branches.
“Each branch has separate powers, and generally each branch is not allowed to exercise the powers of the other branches: The Legislative Branch exercises congressional power, the Executive Branch exercises executive power, and the Judicial Branch exercises judicial review.”
The practice of crafting lazy legislation (legislation so vague the departments and agencies associated with the legislation can literally write their own powers) has served to create an all-powerful bureaucracy, which some call the “Deep State.” And where the mere mention of the Deep State conjures the notion of conspiracy theories, the existence of a bureaucracy that transcends the constitutional boundaries defined by the Separation of Powers is anything but a conspiracy theory.
The SCOTUS ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency proves this point beyond doubt.
The Ruling’s Far-Reaching Implications
With this ruling, the door is opened for a flurry of lawsuits targeting each and every agency and department that employs regulatory powers not specifically granted to them by legislation. It limits the unbridled authority of the Executive Branch while it forces the over-glorified activists that call themselves members of Congress to actually do their jobs and craft comprehensive pieces of legislation.
The implications of the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency ruling manifest in the facilitation of a return of the Executive Branch to its enumerated powers as mandated in the US Constitution and the beginning of an era when the bureaucracy of the federal government is hobbled from inflicting its unlegislated authority over the nation.
The next crucial case that SCOTUS must hear is one that enables the revisiting of the horrible decisions that bastardized the Commerce Clause into being the vehicle that facilitated a centralized government. Once those decisions are overturned we can begin the long-overdue return to truly being the constitutional Republic our Framers intended for our country to be.
As we start the observance of Independence Day, one would have to admit that a return to a constitutional form of government with fidelity to the rule of law over the manipulation of the woke and special interests would be a great birthday present to our nation.
Happy Independence Day. Please celebrate responsibly.
