Supreme Court muzzles EPA on climate

Environmental lawyers say the Supreme Court sent a clear message in its landmark ruling in West Virginia v. EPA: If a federal agency wants to craft robust climate regulations, it better not crow about them. If EPA — or any other federal agency, the White House or even advocacy groups — touts a regulation’s climate significance, lawyers said, that rule could fall victim to the so-called major questions doctrine, which the six-justice conservative majority applied last month in West Virginia to strike down the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (Greenwire, June 30). . . .