Breaking down the legal basis for ruling on West Virginia v. EPA: Standing, Mootness, and Implications

With heightened pleas from the scientific community to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, legal challenges to environmental regulations have taken on renewed importance. Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the landmark environmental case, West Virginia v. EPA. [1] The case has vast implications for climate action– the ruling could fundamentally dismantle the federal government’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. [2] However, while the Court’s decision has been strongly rebuked by many, the larger question surrounding it remains whether the Court should have issued a decision at all. The U.S. Supreme Court has historically heard and ruled on cases only where they would resolve a standing injury or harm by ruling on a given case. [3] Conversely, the Court has historically not heard cases where their ruling would not impact involved parties, making the decision to agree to rule on West Virginia a contradiction of the Court’s self-imposed rules. Under the Supreme Court’s traditional application of standing, it should not have heard West Virginia due to its reliance on Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) legislation that never went into effect. In addition, having agreed to hear the case, the Court should have ruled it to be moot because the companies that would have been affected had already become compliant by sheer market forces, therefore, no longer had an interest in the matter that could be altered by Court action. 

Both standing and mootness are legal doctrines that stem from Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which governs U.S. federal court practices. [4] Legal standing addresses whether the plaintiff is the proper party to assert their claim in a federal court. Essentially, this doctrine grants the U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases in which both parties have concrete interests that can be resolved by a decision of the Court. Therefore, the plaintiffs in the given case must be able to demonstrate that the defendant has inflicted injury that can be settled by Court action. The concept can best be understood through the 2021 Supreme Court case TransUnion v. Ramirez.[5] The named respondent, Sergio Ramirez, and his wife had went to purchase a car and, after his credit history was ran, he discovered he was flagged under a “terrorist list” in the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC) database. The couple proceeded to buy the car under his wife’s name, and TransUnion eventually removed the “terrorist list” alert from future credit reports. Considering that Ramirez was able to purchase the car lawfully, the case would have been rendered moot by the Court. However, a class action was filed that included other individuals whose names had been flagged under OFAC similarly to Ramirez’s. The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the lower court, ruling that only a subset of the respondents who actually had their OFAC “terrorist” status sent to credit agencies had concretely been harmed by the petitioner’s violation of the Fair Credit Reporting and had legal standing to seek damages in this case. [6] Therefore, the mere risk that the other respondents’ status would be revealed did not warrant tangible harm done by the petitioner. This case demonstrates the precedent the Court has set for determining if a case has legal standing under Article III of the Constitution– there are strict standards to determine whether the party bringing the lawsuit is concretely hurt enough to have standing. 

Conversely, a case can be ruled moot when both parties no longer have an interest that can be resolved by a decision of the Court. [7] A recent example of the Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v City of New York illuminates the complexity of the concept. Applying for possession of a firearm in New York without a license requires a “premises” license specific to a particular address. In this case, three individuals with “premises” licenses wanted to transport their handguns to shooting ranges outside of New York City, a prohibited action by New York law. The three individuals filed a lawsuit asking a federal district court to declare the city’s restrictions an infringement on their Second Amendment rights. [8] Before the case was heard by the Supreme Court, New York amended their regulations, repealing the restriction. As a result, the Court held that the petitioner’s claim for relief with respect to New York City is moot. [9] 

While applications of legal standing to any legal case are generally without exceptions applications of mootness aren’t. A key caveat to this justiciability doctrine is the potential for a harm to recur. [10] A classic example of this exception would be the justification for the ruling of Roe v. Wade (1973). The petitioner never received the abortion she had been initially seeking, and gave birth; therefore, the case had naturally resolved itself and could technically be ruled moot. However, the Supreme Court considered the issue of a pregnancy being brought to Court an exception to the mootness doctrine because an unwanted pregnancy is an issue “capable of repetition yet evading review,” meaning a forced unwanted pregnancy has a near guarantee of recurring. [11]

The Court has thus historically applied strict standards in determining which cases have standing and has liberally applied the mootness doctrine to nullify cases. However, the Court egregiously departed from this tradition in West Virginia v. EPA. In 2015, West Virginia and nineteen other states, utilities, and coal-mining companies legally challenged the Obama Administration’s proposed regulation on carbon emissions under the Clean Power Plan. The plan aimed to meet the U.S.’s commitment in the Paris Climate Agreement by imposing regulations on the coal industry power plants, citing the EPA’s regulatory power in regard to Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act (CAA). [12] However, the Court had already stayed Obama’s plan in 2016, while the D.C. Circuit Court repealed the Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle the CPP, and, therefore, there were no rules to challenge once the case was brought in 2021. [13] Still, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Section 111(d) of the CAA did not grant the EPA the authority to regulate coal power plants using the CPP’s policies because Congress has not explicitly given the EPA authority to force coal power plants to use “generation-shifting” to lower emissions. [14]

Irrespective of the Court’s position on whether the CPP was lawful, there was no tangible harm for the states to have standing given the coal companies had already largely moved into compliance with the CPP’s mandates. To begin with, in 2007, the Court heard another EPA case regarding carbon emissions, Massachusetts v. EPA and stated greenhouse gasses qualified as air pollutants under the CAA. [15] Because of this, companies and industries began complying with emissions reduction targets by the early 2010s. More importantly, market conditions had begun to force coal power plants to reduce their emissions and transition to other energy sources over the past decade. [16] Lower natural gas prices due to shale revolution, stagnant electricity demand, and policies favoring wind and solar generation have promoted a shift away from coal. [17] These circumstances resulted in the plants in question being almost uniformly under the emissions target the CPP had proposed, which demonstrates that the plan would not have harmed the petitioners in West Virginia and the case should never have been heard. 

Further, even if the petitioners had been harmed in West Virginia, by the time the Court heard the case the Clean Power Plan had never gone into effect without chance of recurrence, meaning the Court should have considered the case moot. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the CPP, meaning it was put on hold until all petitions had been resolved without ever going into effect. [18] Thus, even in analyzing the exception to the mootness doctrine (recurrence without ability for federal review), West Virginia did not meet this criteria. The Biden Administration explicitly stated it would not follow through with this Obama-era plan and draft its own climate agenda. [19] Therefore, there was no chance the CPP would recur and should have been declared moot by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

With their ruling, the Court significantly diminished both Massachusetts and Chevron deference. Massachusetts v. EPA did not simply give the EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions as a greenhouse gas, it instructed the EPA to and was, therefore, overturned by West Virginia gutting the agency’s authority. [20] The Court also further undermined Chevron deference, established by Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a legal principle which urges federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute that Congress delegated to the specific agency to administer. [21] The West Virginia majority opinion based its argument upon the “major questions” doctrine, an inconsistently used exception to Chevron Deference for when deciding issues of “major economic and political significance.” [22] However, in order to rule on West Virginia the Court had to seriously expand the usage of the major questions doctrine because Congress had deliberately written the Section 111(d) statute to apply broadly, opening the door for overturning many more regulatory practices that aren’t “explicitly” allowed by Congress. Both Massachusetts and Chevron deference should have given the EPA the ability and power to regulate coal power plants via the CPP the way it suggested. Had the CPP ever been put into effect, these two principles would have upheld the EPA’s authority to enforce their regulations against the coal industry. However, with the West Virginia ruling, the Court essentially pushed these two principles aside and potentially opened many other rulings for revision.

In addition, West Virginia has extremely direct consequences for a long-running case to be considered by the Court in the Fall–Sackett v. EPA. Sackett also revolves around regulatory power, except it concerns the Clean Water Act. The Sackett family attempted to build property on a piece of their land that was wetland and required a federal permit, but the family disputed this raising the question of what constitutes “waters of the United States.” [23] If the Court were to rule in favor of the Sackett family, close to ninety percent of federally regulated waterways in America would lose projections provided by the Clean Water Act. [24]  With Sackett, since the specific wetlands being argued over in this case were not explicitly deemed protected in the CWA, the Court could take a similar approach in terms of restricting the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act by finding the agency had overstepped its authority to regulate the United States’ wetlands and waterways.

As discussed, West Virginia had questionable legal standing, as the petitioners had already become compliant with the CPP due to regulation and natural market conditions. Even when harm was considered, the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court stay of the Clean Power Plan should have rendered any original harm done moot. Despite these justiciability concerns, the Court ruled on the case and by greatly expanding usage of the “major questions doctrine,” the door has been left open to strip the EPA of further regulatory authority. While the Supreme Court contended the EPA overstepped its bounds, it was really the Court itself that overstepped by ruling in West Virginia, making a decision that will have environmental implications for decades. 

Sources:

[1] West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. __  (2022) 

[2] Maxine Joselaw, “Supreme Court’s EPA ruling upends Biden’s environmental agenda,” Washington Post, June 30, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/30/epa-supreme-court-west-virginia/. 

[3] “Mootness: An Explanation of the Justiciability Doctrine,” Every CRS Report, February 7, 2007, https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RS22599.html  

[4] “Mootness: An Expanation,”

[5]  TransUnion LLC v. Ramriez, 594 U.S. __ (2021)

[6] "TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez," Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-297. 

[7] “Mootness Doctrine: Overview,” Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-3/section-2/clause-1/mootness-doctrine-overview 

[8] New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, 590 U.S. (2020)

[9] New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, 590 U.S. (2020)

[10] “Mootness Doctrine: Overview,” 

[11] Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973)

Stephen Wermiel, SCOTUS for law students: Battling over mootness, SCOTUSblog (Aug. 29, 2019, 11:48 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/08/scotus-for-law-students-battling-over-mootness/ 

[12] West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. __ (2022)

[13] West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. __ (2022)

[14] West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. __ (2022)

[15] Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 US 497 (2007)

[16] Howard Gruenspecht, “The U.S. coal sector: Recent and continuing challenges,” Brookings Institute (2019).

[17] Gruenspecht, “The U.S. coal sector,”.

[18] Courtney Scobie, “Supreme Court Stays EPA’s Clean Power Plan,” American Bar, February 17, 2016, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/environmental-energy/practice/2016/021716-energy-supreme-court-stays-epas-clean-power-plan/. 

[19] Jean Chemnick, “Biden won’t revive Obama’s Clean Power Plan. So now what?” ClimateWire, February 9, 2021, https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-wont-revive-obamas-clean-power-plan-so-now-what/.

[20] Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 US 497 (2007)

[21] Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837 (1984)

[22] West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. __ (2022)

[23] Sackett v. EPA, 566 US _ (2012)

[24] West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. (2022)