Harvard Law Review on Massachusetts v. EPA

Massachusetts v. EPA is certainly significant because the Court entered the public debate on global warming and because the Court’s identification of a source of state standing outside proprietary interests or parens patriae has the potential to empower the states to compel federal regulation. But focusing on these particular holdings may miss the broader significance of the case: Massachusetts v. EPA may be part of an emerging shift away from the expansive deference of the Chevron era and toward greater judicial oversight of administrative action. Since the early 1980s, the presidential control model has dominated debates on discretion, accountability, and judicial review. However, recent decisions—some involving highly charged political issues—have looked suspiciously upon expansive presidential control arguments and ultimately rejected them….

Massachusetts v. EPA is another strike against the presidential control model and in favor of heightened external accountability…. The Court most explicitly showed its distrust of political influence on the merits. In holding that the EPA could not “ignore the statutory text,” the Court noted that “[t]o the extent that this constrains agency discretion to pursue other priorities of the Administrator or the President, this is the congressional design.” Reserving its most forceful language to criticize one factor on the EPA’s “laundry list” of impermissible reasons not to regulate, the Court declared that “while the President has broad authority in foreign affairs, that authority does not extend to the refusal to execute domestic laws.” In the context of the Bush White House’s well-known ideologically driven approach to environmental policy, such statements amount to a significant reprimand of political influence over administrative decisions.