Decades ago, Congress authorized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate car emissions under the Clean Air Act if and only if EPA found that those specific emissions caused dangerous health effects based on actual evidence of harm . But during the Obama years, the EPA wholly ignored Congress and in the name of ending so-called “climate change,” unilaterally expanded its power in ways never seen before by issuing its “Endangerment Finding.”
Instead of sticking to its assignment and respecting separation of powers, EPA relied on the Endangerment Finding to start regulating all greenhouse gas emissions—impacting nearly every American industry with downstream regulations that crippled our economy and destroyed entire industries. Notably, the EPA never even found that car emissions are harmful, let alone new car emissions. It also never found that cars even emit greenhouse gases. But EPA moved forward anyways, issuing regulations to control all new car emissions in America because it wanted to. Now, after years of Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) and other organizations and states challenging EPA in courts to stop the overreach, the Trump Administration EPA is finally rescinding the unconstitutional Endangerment Finding.
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The EPA’s drastic measures were part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to enact global climate change rules that harmed the American industry, jobs, and economy. EPA did not even follow the scientific process or expert findings. Instead, it rewrote congressional law to fit a climate change agenda in an unprecedented and unconstitutional manner.
When the EPA went too far in pursuing this climate agenda at the expense of the Constitution, SLF sued and won. In Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, SLF successfully challenged EPA’s related attempts to find new authority to regulate climate change and rewrite clear congressional statutes to fit its own goals. And in SLF v. EPA, SLF challenged the Obama EPA’s unilateral decision to redefine “waters of the United States” so that it could exercise jurisdiction over nearly every property in America, a plainly unconstitutional move that ignored Congress’s Clean Water Act.
Now, the Trump Administration is doing its part to walk back Obama’s disastrous regulations. SLF filed a public comment supporting the Administration’s rescission of the Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gas emissions and applauds its efforts to restore constitutional balance in America.