Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
Page Number: 84

28 

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

be  taken  seriously,  not  even  in  a  footnote”).  Return  to 
Brown & Williamson, which all agree is the key case in this 
sphere.  It disclaimed any reliance on “Congress’ failure” to 
grant FDA jurisdiction over tobacco.  529 U. S., at 155.  In-
stead, the Court focused on the statutes Congress “ha[d] en-
acted,” which created “a distinct regulatory scheme” for to-
bacco,  incompatible  with  FDA’s.  Ibid.  (emphasis  added). 
Here, as I’ve shown and the majority effectively concedes, 
there  is  nothing  equivalent.    See  supra,  at  9–12.    Search 
high and low, nothing in current law conflicts with, or oth-
erwise casts doubt on, the Clean Power Plan.  That leaves 
the  Court  in  much  the  same  place  it  was  when  deciding 
Massachusetts v. EPA.  Said the Court then: “That subse-
quent  Congresses  have  eschewed  enacting  binding  emis-
sions limitations to combat global warming tells us nothing 
about what Congress meant” when it enacted the Clean Air
Act.  549 U. S., at 529–530.  And so the Court recognized 
EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide.  But that Court 
was not this Court; and this Court deprives EPA of the au-
thority Congress gave it in Section 111(d) to respond to the
same environmental danger. 

III 
Some years ago, I remarked that “[w]e’re all textualists
now.”  Harvard Law School, The Antonin Scalia Lecture Se-
ries: A Dialogue with Justice Elena Kagan on the Reading 
of Statutes (Nov. 25, 2015).  It seems I was wrong.  The cur-
rent Court is textualist only when being so suits it.  When 
that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons
like the “major questions doctrine” magically appear as get-
out-of-text-free  cards.8    Today,  one  of  those  broader  goals 

—————— 

8 The  majority  opinion  at  least  addresses  the  statute’s  text,  though 
overstating its ambiguity and approaching the action taken under it with 
unwarranted “skepticism.”  Ante, at 28; see ante, at 28–31.  The concur-
rence,  by  contrast,  concludes  that  the  Clean  Air  Act  does  not  clearly 
enough authorize EPA’s Plan without ever citing the statutory text.  See