In two separate Oct. 4 orders, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. denied applications for a stay in nine cases: Oklahoma v. EPA; Continental Resources, Inc. v. EPA; NACCO Natural Resources Corp. v. EPA; Westmoreland Mining Holdings, LLC v. EPA; North Dakota v. EPA; Midwest Ozone Group v. EPA; Talen Montana, LLC v. EPA; America’s Power v. EPA; and National Rural Electric Cooperative Association v. EPA.
The applications for stays presented to Roberts asked the nation’s high court to stay a portion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new emissions rule, which is intended “to reduce emissions of [greenhouse gases] and other harmful air pollutants from the Crude Oil and Natural Gas source category.”
The portion of the rule in question strengthens and expands the emission standards related to methane for existing facilities that started construction, reconstruction or modification on or before Nov. 15, 2021. The section of the new rule also establishes implementation requirements for states to limit methane pollution at the facilities it designates. But states can still take some factors into account when applying a standard to a particular source under the rule.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June overruled its 40-year-old Chevron deference doctrine, allowing courts to directly determine if an agency’s rulemaking is in line with its statutory authority if a statute is ambiguous.