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On November 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that involves a legal challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency''s (EPA) 1997 decision to revise its national air quality standards. The court has now taken the case under advisement and a final decision is expected by June.
"This is the first time the Supreme Court has taken a case involving the key standard-setting provision of the Clean Air Act," said Cary Coglianese, a lawyer and political scientist who is a Belfer Center faculty affiliate.
The case, "U.S. Environmental Protection Agency v. American Trucking Associations," came to the Supreme Court after a lower court sent EPA''s revised standards back to the agency, having found that EPA had failed to apply the Act in a way that satisfied constitutional requirements.
"The case is about more than the question of whether to dust off an old constitutional doctrine," wrote Coglianese in Environment magazine. It also about whether EPA can consider the economic costs of regulation when setting air quality standards. EPA believes it cannot take costs into account when setting its standards, but the lower court''s decision "placed the issue of costs on the Court''s agenda."
Unlike some observers who warn that a decision against EPA will undermine the entire system of federal regulation in the U.S., Coglianese expects that the outcome will be much narrower. "The Court can direct EPA to open up its decision making to include factors such as costs and equity, but still do so in a way that has little impact on anything other than the Clean Air Act," he said.
Coglianese has filed a friend of the court brief in the American Trucking case, which he co-authored with Gary Marchant of the Arizona State University College of Law and submitted on behalf of twenty professors and scientists.
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/prg/cary/costabs.htm