Abortion, school prayer and guns have rightfully gotten much of the press about the Supreme Court this session. But a final high-profile case from this term could end up being the worst one of all:
Donald Cohen over the ITPI (In The Public Interest) an organization that fights corporate and government wrongdoing at all levels, has this to say:
[T}here’s another case with massive implications for our freedom.
No, I’m not talking about Carson v. Makin, which the court just struck down on Tuesday, allowing for more expansion of voucher policies that provide public money for private and religious education. (That’s a huge deal too.)
I’m talking about West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency—and it’s really, really scary.
The New York Times writes that the case is a “product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.”
If the court does what it’s expected to do, the ruling will severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants.
But that’s not the half of it.
Remember when Trump’s right-hand man Steve Bannon said that the administration’s goal was the “deconstruction of the administrative state?”
As the Times documents, conservatives are ultimately after something much broader and deeper than just protecting the oil and coal industry’s right to pollute the air. They want to “overturn the legal doctrine by which Congress has delegated authority to federal agencies to regulate the environment, health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more.”
The issues covered by this case will have far-reaching effects for every American. It’s a Federalist Society wet dream. And it has been a long-term goal of the oil, gas and coal industries. They might be about to get what they want as soon as this week or next.
You can read the rest here.
