The Supreme Court ruled that energy producers can sue the Environmental Protection Agency over its 2022 approval of California’s strict vehicle emissions standards.
The high court ruled 7-2 in favor of allowing a group of energy producers and royalty owners, including Diamond Alternative Energy, to sue the EPA over its Biden-era decision to grant the Golden State a waiver under the Clean Air Act. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.
The majority opinion specified that the Supreme Court’s ruling only dealt with standing rather than the merits of the case, which will be decided at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, per the high court’s Friday order.
“EPA and California may or may not prevail on the merits in defending EPA’s approval of the California regulations,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But the justiciability of the fuel producers’ challenge to EPA’s approval of the California regulations is evident. Courts should not ‘make standing law more complicated than it needs to be.’”
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Kavanaugh added. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence before the Court of Appeals, the fuel producers established Article III standing to challenge EPA’s approval of the California regulations.”
The waiver granted by former President Joe Biden in 2022, which would have allowed California to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and was at the center of this legal battle, was blocked by President Donald Trump earlier this month when he signed a congressional resolution.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote dissenting opinions. Sotomayor said she would have remanded the case back to the appeals court and asked its judges to reevaluate the question of standing.
Jackson expressed concern over the majority’s ruling finding standing, claiming that it does not align with their usual standard for determining standing. She also noted the case would soon be “and is largely moot already.”
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“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens,” Jackson wrote. “Because the Court had ample opportunity to avoid that result, I respectfully dissent.”
While Trump has blocked the EPA waiver at the center of the case, the ruling sets a new precedent for when companies and third parties may sue over similar federal regulations in the future.