Significant new rules issued by federal agencies are routinely challenged in court, but it is far from easy to get an agency decision overturned, due to the deference given the agency’s presumptive expertise and latitude to interpret ambiguous statutory language. However, the Supreme Court put a new arrow in challengers’ quivers in June of 2022 by applying the “major questions doctrine” to overturn EPA rules in West Virginia v. EPA, the first time a majority opinion expressly relied on the doctrine by name.
Under the major questions doctrine, an agency may not assert “highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” Thus, as explained in Util. Air. Reg. Group (UARG) v. EPA, courts can reject an agency’s claim of authority when the claim of authority concerns an issue of vast economic and political significance and Congress has not clearly empowered the agency with authority over the issue.
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