An editorial from the Parkersburg News and Sentinel
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — U.S. Supreme Court Justices sent a clear message to President Barack Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency this week: Executive overreach will not go unchallenged. The Clean Power Plan is a problem and will receive the full legal scrutiny Obama tried to avoid.
It is rare for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue such a brief, essentially telling Obama and the EPA to end attempts to implement the Clean Power Plan before its legality is thoroughly challenged in lower courts. But it was the right thing to do. Justices also appear to be signaling their willingness to take up any Clean Power Plan cases that should reach that level.
Imagine, court after court picking apart the Clean Power Plan in the states, and then a chance for the U.S. Supreme Court to examine every detail of that insidious effort. Given the Court’s stern strike-down of the Clean Air Act last summer – “It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,'” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia – it is not hard to imagine the outcome of such an intensive legal analysis.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is to be commended for leading the charge against the Clean Power Plan, rallying a block of 27 states to fight mandates that would have cost jobs, increased energy costs and done very little to protect the planet.
There may be no going back. Executive overreach may already have done its damage to coal-, oil- and natural-gas-producing states. But, for now, anyway, the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Obama and the EPA to stop kicking us while we are down; and let the next president know the highest court in the land will not allow itself to be bypassed by them, either.
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