Supreme Court agrees to hear greenhouse gas cases

• Decision puts EPA authority to regulate power plants in jeopardy
• States%2C industries had sought high court%27s intervention
• Court has another air pollution case on its 2013 docket

WASHINGTON — Dealing a potential blow to the Obama administration and environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider limiting the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate greenhouse gases.

The court accepted six separate petitions that sought to roll back EPA's clout over carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, refineries and factories. That could signal the court's dissatisfaction with a 2012 ruling by the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia Circuit that affirmed the agency's authority.

The decision to accept cases brought by Texas, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, energy producers and others represented a tentative victory for groups that customarily enjoy considerable sway at the conservative-leaning court. They had complained about EPA's permitting process for building or modifying plants that emit greenhouse gases.

"The EPA is seeking to regulate U.S. manufacturing in a way that Congress never planned and never intended," said Harry Ng, general counsel for the American Petroleum Institute. "That kind of overreach can have enormous implications on U.S. competitiveness and the prices that consumers pay for fuel and manufactured goods."

The case presents a risk for President Obama and his environmental regulators, who replaced the Bush administration's aversion to regulating greenhouse gases with a major push in the other direction under the belief that the emissions are responsible for climate change.

Still, environmental groups noted the court's refusal to consider broader issues, including EPA's basic determination that six greenhouse gases pose a threat and its earlier auto emissions standards. The justices limited the case to one question: whether EPA's regulation of motor vehicle emissions triggers the new permitting requirements for stationary sources.

"Those decisions make it abundantly clear, once and for all, that EPA has both the legal authority and the responsibility to address climate change and the carbon pollution that causes it," said Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund.

The justices already have one case dealing with air pollution on their docket. That case involves the EPA's authority to measure pollution that travels across state lines and require upwind states to pay for emissions reductions in downwind states. It will be heard Dec. 10.

Adding the new cases, which will be consolidated into one, makes environmental regulation a major topic for the court. "This term is shaping up to be a critical test of the court's view of the federal government's power to solve trans-boundary and trans-national problems like air pollution," said Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center.

The broader battle over greenhouse gas regulation dates back to the Clinton administration, when President Bill Clinton signed the multi-nation Kyoto Protocol but the Senate refused to ratify it. In 2010, the Senate also blocked Obama's effort to set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

A landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2007 confirmed the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. But in 2011, the high court cited that regulatory power in protecting industries from private lawsuits seeking damages for the emissions.

Opponents of the EPA regulations had placed their hope in the court's conservative justices, several of whom have voiced concerns about administrative agencies' clout. In a dissent last year, Chief Justice John Roberts warned that "the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed."

"The EPA violated the U.S. Constitution and the federal Clean Air Act when it concocted greenhouse gas regulations out of whole cloth," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. "This is a runaway federal agency, so we are pleased the Obama administration will have to defend its lawless regulations before the U.S. Supreme Court."

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