Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 60

4 

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

See  Reply  Brief  for  29  States  and  State  Agencies  in  No. 
15A773,  p. 33  (conceding  the  point).    The  effect  of  the 
Court’s  order,  followed  by  the  Trump  administration’s  re-
peal of the rule, was that the Clean Power Plan never went 
into  effect.  The  ensuing  years,  though,  proved  the  Plan’s 
moderation.  Market forces alone caused the power industry
to  meet  the  Plan’s  nationwide  emissions  target—through 
exactly  the  kinds  of  generation  shifting  the  Plan  contem-
plated.  See  84  Fed.  Reg.  32561–32562  (2019);  Brief  for
United States 47.  So by the time yet another President took
office, the Plan had become, as a practical matter, obsolete. 
For that reason, the Biden administration announced that, 
instead of putting the Plan into effect, it would commence a 
new rulemaking.  Yet this Court determined to pronounce
on the legality of the old rule anyway.  The Court may be
right  that  doing  so  does  not  violate  Article  III  mootness 
rules (which are notoriously strict).  See ante, at 14–16.  But 
the Court’s docket is discretionary, and because no one is
now subject to the Clean Power Plan’s terms, there was no
reason  to  reach  out  to  decide  this  case.    The  Court  today
issues  what  is  really  an  advisory  opinion  on  the  proper
scope  of  the  new  rule  EPA  is  considering.  That  new  rule 
will be subject anyway to immediate, pre-enforcement judi-
cial  review.    But  this  Court  could  not  wait—even  to  see 
what the new rule says—to constrain EPA’s efforts to ad-
dress climate change.

The limits the majority now puts on EPA’s authority fly
in the face of the statute Congress wrote.  The majority says
it is simply “not plausible” that Congress enabled EPA to
regulate power plants’ emissions through generation shift-
ing.  Ante, at 31.  But that is just what Congress did when
it broadly authorized EPA in Section 111 to select the “best 
system  of  emission 
for  power  plants. 
reduction” 
§7411(a)(1).  The  “best  system”  full  stop—no  ifs,  ands,  or 
buts of any kind relevant here.  The parties do not dispute
that  generation  shifting  is  indeed  the  “best  system”—the