Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency
Declining to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new cars under the Clean Air Act, EPA argues that states and environmental groups lack standing to challenge the agency’s refusal to act; the Supreme Court narrowly upholds Massachusetts’ standing
Status: The US Supreme Court reversed the DC Circuit; the matter has been sent back to EPA
Discussion & Analysis: In 1999, EPA was petitioned to set standards for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by new motor vehicles. The Clean Air Act requires the agency to regulate “any air pollutant” emitted by new cars if, in EPA’s “judgment,” the pollutant causes or contributes to “air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” EPA denied the petition, and a coalition of environmental groups, states, and cities sued the agency. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals found for EPA, and the coalition appealed.
The Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s judgment and ruled in favor of the petitioners. Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Stevens first determined that the petition could be heard, based on the standing of the state of Massachusetts. (If even one plaintiff in federal court can satisfy the requirements of standing, the case may proceed.) Next, the Court held both that EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and that the agency had violated the Act by refusing to decide whether greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
The majority opinion emphasized two special factors in its discussion of standing. First, it appears critical that the petitioners were asserting a procedural right—the right to have EPA issue a reasoned decision—that Congress had fashioned in the Clean Air Act. Second, the Court suggested that Massachusetts, as a sovereign state invoking the jurisdiction of a federal court, enjoys a “special position and interest.” Taken together, the presence of these factors meant that Massachusetts was entitled to “special solicitude in [the Court’s] standing analysis.” The Court went on to conclude that Massachusetts had successfully established each of the three elements required for a plaintiff to have standing under Article III of the Constitution: “injury in fact,” “causation,” and “redressability.” In other words, the petitioners’ allegations of impending harm from climate change asserted a concrete and particularized injury that was actual or imminent, the injury was fairly traceable to EPA’s refusal to regulate, and a favorable decision by a federal court would redress their injury at least in part.
The majority’s analysis in Massachusetts includes several important statements that may assist environmental litigants to clear the standing bar in future cases. First, while the Court purported to accord special treatment to a state plaintiff, it also clarified how invoking a procedural right liberalizes the standing analysis. For example, the Court explained that “Congress has the power to define injuries and articulate chains of causation that will give rise to a case or controversy where none existed before,” and held that litigants vested with procedural rights have standing if there is “some possibility” that the relief they seek will prompt the defendant to reconsider its allegedly harmful decision. (Click here for a discussion on how the lower courts have grappled with—and disagreed over—the proper test for standing in environmental cases involving claims of “procedural” injury.)
Second, the Court explained that its jurisdiction does not depend on a federal agency being able to redress a plaintiff’s injury “in one fell regulatory swoop”—rather, the Court may hear claims based on an agency’s ability to take steps to slow or reduce the underlying problem (here, global warming), without proof that the agency is able to reverse the problem altogether. Agencies, the Court recognized, “whittle away” at problems over time, and that incremental approach should not raise an insurmountable standing bar for environmental plaintiffs, who likewise operate issue-by-issue and case-by-case.
Third, the majority noted that the “gist” of standing under Article III of the Constitution is whether the petitioners have “‘such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination.’” This modest view of standing as a means of ensuring the adversarial presentation of issues differs vastly from the more structural vision of standing, espoused by the conservative wing of the Court, that asks whether the judiciary is the proper branch to be addressing certain kinds of issues.
Although the Massachusetts decision is rightly hailed as an environmental victory, Chief Justice Roberts’s dissenting opinion on standing does not bode well for broad citizen access to justice over the long term. The Chief Justice argued that the standing doctrine boils down to ensuring the proper separation of powers among the Judicial, Executive, and Legislative branches. And global warming, he wrote, is a problem for Congress and the President—not the courts. The Chief Justice’s approach to this case is troubling for another reason: despite chiding the majority for overstepping its bounds on standing—and authoring a dissenting opinion finding that the court is without jurisdiction to hear the case—he nevertheless joined in Justice Scalia’s separate dissenting opinion on the merits.
Key Opinion: Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, __U.S.__, 127 S.Ct. 1438 (2007).
See Also: Coalition for a Sustainable Delta v. Carlson, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2008 WL 2899725 (E.D. Cal. July 24, 2008) (holding that agricultural water users are without constitutional standing to challenge California fishing regulations and distinguishing Massachusetts v. EPA as a case where standing depended on the presence of a state plaintiff).
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