CURTIS SCHUBE: EPA Ending Endangerment Finding Restores Federal Power Where It Belongs

Have you ever wondered why cars are getting so expensive? Regulation. What about that ridiculous feature that turns your car off every time you come to a stop sign? Regulation. Or why it seems like invisible forces are pushing you toward an electric car? Again, regulation. Specifically, the Endangerment Finding, promulgated under the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). If you drive a car, the EPA has likely made your buying experience more expensive and your driving experience less enjoyable.

These things could go away if the EPA’s recent action to rescind the Endangerment Finding withstands the lawsuits that were filed (a tactic happening all too often when President Donald Trump does something). Critics portray the move as an abandonment of environmental responsibility. But at its core, the rescission is not a scientific judgment. Rather, it is a legal judgment about who decides how the nation reacts to scientific issues such as climate change. Here, the changes were sweeping, so the EPA rightly corrected itself.

The 2009 Endangerment Finding transformed a section of the Clean Air Act so the EPA could authorize itself to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles based on their supposed contribution to global climate change. The Obama EPA pointed to a provision of the Clean Air Act written in 1967, which gave the EPA authority over vehicle components that “cause or contribute to air pollution…reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” For decades, that authority was used to combat local and regional air pollution problems such as smog and tailpipe emissions, not worldwide pollution. This makes sense, in that, these were concerns that society focused on in 1967.

Over 40 years later, the Obama EPA concluded that six greenhouse gases—never identified by Congress—qualified as “air pollutants” whose global atmospheric concentrations contributed to “climate change.” This was not a discussion in 1967, yet that EPA concluded that the statute authorized this shift anyway.

From that finding flowed an ever-expanding regulatory framework that drastically impacted automobile manufacturing and pushed toward mandating electric vehicles. It has influenced billions of dollars in investment decisions and consumer spending.

Since that time the Supreme Court has clarified important limits on federal agency authority. First, in 2022, the Court helped better define the major questions doctrine in West Virginia v. EPA. Now, when an agency claims the power to decide issues of vast economic and political significance, it must point to clear congressional authorization. Broad or ambiguous statutory language is not enough to support sweeping regulatory transformations. When the stakes are high, Congress must speak clearly.