Capito praises Supreme Court decision on EPA 'overregulation'

A U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday related to limiting federal overregulation is drawing praise from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

The ruling in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was in favor of the petitioners, and narrowed the authority the federal government has to regulate “waters of the United States (WOTUS) at the expense of states and private citizens under the Clean Water Act (CWA).”

The Sackett case involved an Idaho couple’s legal battle to construct a house on a lake but construction was blocked by the EPA, which said the property contained “wetlands” protected by the Clean Water Act.

“Today, the Supreme Court sent a loud and clear warning shot to the Biden administration about its attempts to overregulate the lives of millions of Americans,” Capito said in a statement after the ruling. “By rejecting the ‘significant nexus’ test, the Court protected America’s farmers, ranchers, builders, and landowners from overreach under the Clean Water Act, and ruled President Biden’s recent WOTUS rule goes too far.”

Capito said the court has shown the “illegal’ overreach of the Biden administration.

“We already knew the EPA’s recent regulatory actions were harmful to American consumers, workers, and employers, but with two straight losses in major environmental cases – WV v. EPA and now Sackett v. EPA – the Court has confirmed the Biden administration’s pattern of environmental overreach is illegal,” she said. “I was proud to both support the petitioners on this case last year and lead a successful effort this year in Congress to overturn the Biden WOTUS rule, and am thrilled with the Court’s decision today, which is a major win for individual freedom.”

Capito led 45 senators and 154 House members in April on an amicus curiae brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the petitioners in the Sackett v. EPA case.

In March, the U.S. Senate passed Capito’s Congressional Review Act (CRA) joint resolution of disapproval that “overturns President Biden’s overreaching WOTUS rule” by a vote of 53-43.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey also issued a statement on the Sackett v. EPA ruling. He had led a 26-state coalition in an amicus brief in support of the petitioners, Michael and Chantell Sackett.

“We now have a clearer definition for Waters of the United States, and we’re pleased the Supreme Court ruled in a way that state lands and waters are less subject to the whims of unelected bureaucrats,” Morrisey said. “The EPA’s confused, convoluted and overbroad understanding of wetlands subject to its regulation would have been costly to property owners who would have spent years and tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars just getting permission from the federal regulators to build on their own property.”

“We are also happy to see the Court reject EPA’s request for deference to its misguided new ‘waters of the United States’ rule, which we have led a coalition in challenging. The Supreme Court has now agreed with what we successfully said there: EPA’s new rule is ‘inconsistent with the text and structure’ of the Clean Water Act.’”

Morrisey said the decision was a “big day for farmers, homebuilders, contractors, property owners and those who care about economic activity not being subject to overreach by the federal government. Next, we will continue our successful fight by taking down the new Biden rulemaking.”

On another front, but related to EPA regulations, Capito, Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, was joined by 26 of her colleagues in sending a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan Thursday urging him to withdraw the proposed new emission standards on American-made vehicles.

The letter expressed concerns over “both the legality of the rules and the impracticality of forcing a massive transition to electric vehicles at a time when the Biden administration is issuing regulations aimed at shutting down the coal- and gas-fired plants that together currently provide the vast majority of America’s baseload power generation.”

“These proposals are legally flawed, divorced from reality with regard to the associated costs and domestic capacity to implement them, and would be devastating for American consumers and workers already burdened by sustained levels of historically high inflation,” the senators wrote.

The EPA proposal would regulate tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions from light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles (Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles – Phase 3).

“These proposals effectively mandate a costly transition to electric cars and trucks in the absence of congressional direction, and the agency should immediately rescind both proposals,” the senators said in their letter.

They also said that forcing a transition to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) through regulation “without explicit delegated authority from Congress violates the separation of powers, as reaffirmed by the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 142 S. Ct. 2587 (2022). Under that precedent, the EPA cannot force a wholesale change to ‘substantially restructure the American energy market’ without explicit congressional authorization.”

Capito said in a previous article about this issue that the aggressive EPA measures to turn to renewables is not realistic or practical.

“These are unrealistic goals,” she said. “I think it’s more a call to their political supporters. There has been a big outcry when this administration, and rightly so, permitted a large project in Alaska (Willow Project) recently, a fossil project that had been on the books for, I think, two decades … Anytime you do that you’ve got to make up for it in this environment and the supporters in Biden’s Democratic Party.”

The goal of 60 percent of Americans driving electric vehicles by 2032 in conjunction with being unable to site a mine (for basic energy needs) is just not practical, she added.

“It’s the impracticality that just galls me,” she said of the Biden administration’s aggressive approach to switch to renewables and moving forward with “very extreme measures.”