FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEWS ADVISORY
June 23, 2014
For More Information, contact:
Luther Strange
Joy Patterson (334) 242-7491
Alabama Attorney General
Claire Haynes (334) 242-7351
Page 1 of 1
AG LAUDS U.S. SUPREME COURT RULING THAT EPA OVERSTEPPED
ITS AUTHORITY IN GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS REGULATIONS
(MONTGOMERY) -Attorney General Luther Strange lauded a U.S. Supreme
Court ruling today that found the Environmental Protection Agency had drastically
overstepped by essentially rewriting portions of the Clean Air Act to take actions
against greenhouse gas emissions that were unsupported by the law.
“What this ruling means is that the President and federal agencies cannot simply
impose dramatic reinterpretations on a law when they have not been able to get
Congress to enact the changes that they wanted,” said Attorney General Strange. “The
Clean Air Act does not provide for the broad regulations that the EPA sought to
implement. The President and the EPA cannot make it so just because they want it to
be that way.”
The Court today stated in the case of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA that
“It is as plain as day that the Act does not envision an elaborate, burdensome
permitting process for major emitters of steam, oxygen, or other harmless
airborne substances.” The Court goes on to say that the fact that the EPA’s
interpretation “would place plainly excessive demands on limited governmental
resources is alone a good reason for rejecting it; but that is not the only reason.
EPA’s interpretation is also unreasonable because it would bring about an
enormous and transformative expansion in EPA’s regulatory authority without
clear congressional authorization.”
The Court noted that the “singular situation (of) an agency laying claim to
extravagant statutory power over the national economy while at the same time
strenuously asserting that the authority claimed would render the statute
‘unrecognizable to the Congress that designed’ it. Ö.It would be patently
unreasonable – not to say outrageous – for EPA to insist on seizing expansive power
that it admits the statute is not designed to grant.”
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501 Washington Avenue * Montgomery, AL 36104 * (334) 242-7300
www.ago.alabama.gov
