EPA’s Clean Power Plan Overreach

Could the Clean Power Plan make the EPA an Electricity Czar?

William Yeatman • July 28, 2015

On June 2, 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s marquee climate change initiative. In the proposal, the EPA took the unusual step of preemptively seeking Chevron deference from federal courts, even though the Clean Power Plan will not undergo judicial review until after the final rule is published in the Federal Register later this summer. Chevron deference is a famous and oft-employed administrative law principle that federal courts should defer to reasonable agency construction of the statutes they are charged with administering, in reference to a seminal 1984 Supreme Court ruling, Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. As this analysis demonstrates, the agency’s request for judicial deference lacks merit....

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