Following the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit the agency’s authority to act on climate change, opponents of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) forthcoming climate disclosure rule have unequivocally declared that the opinion dooms it, too.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the recent EPA ruling, the Supreme Court held that the so-called “major questions doctrine” applies when a court determines an agency has taken on new, extensive power that vastly expands its ability to address extraordinary policy questions. According to the Supreme Court, under this doctrine, it will only strike down regulations if agencies make an “unprecedented” departure from past interpretations of legal authority or “assert highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” To that end, one scholar argued that the doctrine should instead be named the “extraordinary questions doctrine,” as agency actions can be major yet permissible.
The above excerpt was originally published in The Hill.
Click here to view the full article.