Yes, really, that happened today, during the transition of power.
Is anyone tired of winning, yet?Quote:
The decision was written by Karen LeCraft Henderson (George H. W. Bush) and A. Raymond Randolph (George H. W. Bush) with Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan (Joe Biden) dissenting, and it found:Ultra vires means the CEQ was acting "beyond the legal scope of it authority."Quote:
As the parties argue the case, it centers on whether the Agencies complied with regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality, an entity within the Executive Office of the President. We will not address these arguments. The CEQ regulations, which purport to govern how all federal agencies must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, are ultra vires.
The court goes on to detail the shenanigans by which an advisory body with no regulatory authority was able to write environmental regulations for the entire United States for nearly a half-century just because it decided it could.
Making the case even more awesome is that it was set off by enviro-wackos suing the FAA for allowing sightseeing flights near some national parts. The enviros claimed the FAA used the wrong standard established by the CEQ to permit the flight. They ended up being right in a backhanded kind of way.
This decision throws the entire environmental regulation scheme governing the federal government into chaos. I suspect that many of the CEQs regulations will be reissued by other agencies, but after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (see The Supreme Court Firebombs the Administrative State and Tells Congress to Get Off Its Butt and Work) that slew the medusa called "Chevron deference, the survival of those replacement regulations is not assured.
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The silver lining is that Trump's EPA, under Lee Zeldin (see We Have Another Trump Cabinet Pick: Lee Zeldin Gets the Nod), will get the first crack at reworking useless and expensive regulations.
