Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 68

12 

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

far.  See ante, at 30–31.  That is a puzzling point.  As an 
initial matter, it recharacterizes what this case has always
been about.  The Trump administration repealed the Clean 
Power Plan for one central reason: because (in its view) Sec-
tion  111  confines  EPA  to  facility-specific,  technological 
measures.  See  84  Fed.  Reg.  32523–32529.  In  reviewing
that repeal, the court below thus addressed that limit alone. 
See American Lung Assn. v. EPA, 985 F. 3d 914, 944 (CADC 
2021).  So add to the oddity of the Court’s declaring a de-
funct regulation unlawful, see supra, at 4, the irregularity
of its suggesting some kind of non-technological limit that 
no one (not EPA, not the parties, not the court below) has 
ever considered.  More important here, both the nature and 
the statutory basis of that limit are left a mystery.  If the 
majority  is  not  distinguishing  between  technological  con-
trols and all others, what is it doing—and how far does its
opinion  constrain  EPA?    The  majority  makes  no  effort  to 
say.  And because that is so, the majority cannot even at-
tempt  to  ground  its  limit  in  the  statutory  language.    I’ve 
just shown that restricting EPA to technological controls is 
inconsistent with Section 111, especially when read in con-
junction with other statutory provisions.  And the majority
provides no reason to think that its (possibly) different limit 
fares  any  better.    Section  111  does  not  impose  any  con-
straints—technological  or  otherwise—on  EPA’s  authority
to regulate stationary sources (except for those stated, like
cost).  In somehow (and to some extent) saying otherwise, 
the majority flouts the statutory text.

“Congress,” this Court has said, “knows to speak in plain
terms  when  it  wishes  to  circumscribe,  and  in  capacious
terms  when  it  wishes  to  enlarge,  agency  discretion.”    Ar-
lington v. FCC, 569 U. S. 290, 296 (2013).  In Section 111, 
Congress spoke in capacious terms.  It knew that “without 
regulatory  flexibility,  changing  circumstances  and  scien-
tific developments would soon render the Clean Air Act ob-
solete.”  Massachusetts, 549 U. S., at 532.  So the provision