June 14th 2025 | Kiran Sabharwal
Edited by Jacqueline Rosenkranz
As the earth’s temperature rises, the issues surrounding the environmental regulatory landscape become increasingly urgent to address: How can the government protect the environment? How far can regulatory agencies extend their administrative power? Both questions have been taken up by Supreme Court cases regarding environmental protection in the last two years, leading to seismic shifts in the abilities of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other executive agencies to act upon their expertise, including in the fight against anthropomorphic climate change. In recent news, the Trump administration is degrading the roots upon which climate action can grow and announced plans to rollback numerous functions of the Environmental Protection Agency [1]. Through recent decisions such as Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, City and County of San Francisco, California v. Environmental Protection Agency, and Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, the government’s capacity to protect our clean water and clean air is diminishing, which creates broad implications for our public health and the health of our ecosystems [2-4].
The Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate pollution and environmental quality was first authorized by Congress. However, when statutory law from Congress is ambiguous, or implies multiple possible solutions, reviewing courts cede to executive agencies’ expertise. Courts consider two questions in ambiguous cases: has Congress provided a clear interpretation? Or is the agency’s interpretation of the statute unreasonable? In the absence of ‘no’ to either question, the court will allow the regulatory agency’s actions to proceed [5]. This is a fundamental gesture to the knowledge of career bureaucrats who spend their lives devoted to issue areas like air pollution or watershed protection. Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. established the standard in 1984 by questioning the ability of the EPA to interpret the Clean Air Act as it saw fit through a provision that grouped pollution emitting machines into regulated “bubbles” [6-7]. Notably, this case actually worked against environmental protection, as the agency was led by a member of the Reagan Administration who was “more inclined toward pursuing industry-friendly deregulation than decreasing pollution” [8]. Chevron doctrine, or Chevron deference, has been applied to expand the power of the executive and his or her agencies on both sides of the American political spectrum, but has been recently used as a tool of environmental protection.
According to the Harvard Law Review, “signals were abundant that the Chevron doctrine had lost the support of the conservative members of the [Supreme] Court, who now make up a strong six-member majority” by 2022, when a weakening of Chevron for major political questions was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court [5]. In June 2024, the Court overruled Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, significantly weakening the ability of executive agencies to enact policies without oversight or statutory guidance from judicial or legislative branches. Loper Bright concerned commercial fishing regulations which required industry-funded monitoring to ensure adherence to the National Marine Fisheries Service Guidelines. Without clear guidance from statutory law, Chevron’s precedent would typically have allowed executive agencies to exert their judgment. However, the Supreme Court’s majority found Chevron to be flawed and impossible to apply regularly across lower courts [9]. The National Resources Defense Council, in announcing its disapproval of the decision, noted that Congressional ambiguity may in fact be intentional, as “sometimes Congress is purposefully inexplicit in order to give the subject-area experts space to decide how best to implement a regulation” [8]. Further, they suggested that an overrule of Chevron will cause more confusion and inconsistency at lower courts because the judicial system now relies on non-expert judges instead of career professionals to determine the best policy. Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent, noted that allowing unelected federal judges to “say what the law is” is dangerous [5]. It rejects the complexities of environmental protection and the ability of the agency to act promptly and efficiently on pressing climate issues.
Another volley of EPA-weakening Supreme Court precedent was issued during March 2025 in City and County of San Francisco, California v. Environmental Protection Agency. It concerns emissions of sewage runoff from the locality’s drainage system, which is characteristic of a Clean Water Act (CWA) case. San Francisco operates on a combined sewer system that emits pollutants into the Pacific Ocean during intense rainstorms. The EPA requires permits for all emissions of water pollution into public bodies of water. During the periodic review of the San Francisco permit, a provision was added which includes protections for the overall quality of the water in question (i.e., the Pacific Ocean).. Ultimately, the case is a question of EPA authority amidst ambiguity — how far can the agency traverse to protect water quality? Where does its authority end? The Supreme Court sided with the locality in a 5-4 decision, opining that “end-result limitations,” or regulations on the total overall water quality, are not permissible under the Clean Water Act. The CWA grants the EPA the power to create “any more stringent legislation” necessary, but the Court found that end-result pollutant limitations exceeded this authority. They also expressed concern over the multiple polluter problem, wherein blame may be assigned to pollution permit holders regardless of their level of contribution to contamination in shared bodies of water, which the majority referred to as “unscrambl[ing] the polluted eggs after the fact” [10-11]. Numerous environmental groups have decried this ruling, with the Sierra Club writing that the case “ignores the basic reality of how water bodies and water pollution work,” which could “hinder the EPA’s ability to enforce the Clean Water Act effectively” [12]. Justice Amy Coney Barret’s dissent “warned that the decision could lead to delays and even denials” in the permit process, weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and adding administrative delays to an already understaffed executive agency [12]. City and County of San Francisco represents another step in the EPA’s decline and sets a precedent beyond Loper Bright regarding judicial overreach into executive agency environmental matters.
The same degradations of EPA authority are occurring in air quality protection policy. Ohio v. EPA also damaged the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to act beyond its strictly provisioned functions under the Clean Air Act. In this case, the Court struck down the ‘Good Neighbor Rule,’ which protected downwind states from pollution from its upwind neighbors. Given that pollutants know no political borders, the rule protected citizens from dangerous health conditions and allowed for more holistic treatment of air contamination issues. However, given the EPA’s tendency to reject state pollution reduction plans that it deemed unfit, the Court ruled that the agency’s implementation requirements were unreasonable [13].
The future of environmental protection requires that agencies act quickly and effectively to curb pollution and climate change before it becomes detrimental to our ecosystems and daily lives. The ability of the EPA to administer its subject-matter expertise in solving these issues is integral to that mission. Through cases such as City and County of San Francisco, California v. Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court weakens the role of the EPA in regulating water and air contamination. Coupled with judicial restrictions on general administrative power — particularly the overrule of Chevron doctrine — the EPA’s capacities are eroding, and are increasingly granted to the courts instead.
Sources:
[1] Environmental Law and Poverty Center. “The Trump EPA’s Rollbacks Threaten Vital Clean Air, Water Safeguards.” Accessed April 8, 2025. https://elpc.org/news/the-trump-epas-rollbacks-are-weakening-vital-clean-air-water-safeguards/.
[2] Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)
[3] City and County of San Francisco v. EPA, 604 U.S. ___ (2025)
[4] Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)
[5] Merril, T. W. “The Demise of Deference — And the Rise of Delegation to Interpret?” Harvard Law Review 138, no. 1 (2024), https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/the-demise-of-deference-and-the-rise-of-delegation-to-interpret/.
[6] Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837 (1984)
[7] Oyez. “Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.” Accessed April 8, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1983/82-1005.
[8] Turrentine, J. “The Supreme Court Ends Chevron Deference—What Now?” National Resources Defense Council, June 28, 2024. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-happens-if-supreme-court-ends-chevron-deference.
[9] Oyez. “Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.” Accessed April 8, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2023/22-451.
[10] Oyez. “City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency.” Accessed April 8, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/23-753.
[11] Quihuis, L, Greene, D., Lipinski, R. “Supreme Court Limits Clean Water Act Permit Requirements in San Francisco v. EPA.” The National Law Review, March 10, 2025. https://natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-limits-clean-water-act-permit-requirements-san-francisco-v-epa.
[12] Ma, H. “A Watershed Moment: Supreme Court Narrows EPA Authority in Recent Clean Water Act Permit Ruling.” The Georgetown Environmental Law Review, March 13, 2025. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/a-watershed-moment-supreme-court-narrows-epa-authority-in-recent-clean-water-act-permit-ruling/.
[13] Oyez. “Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency.” Accessed April 8, 2025. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2023/23A349.
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