MK3|MK3Blog|Oct. 01, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a landmark case rolling back federal environmental protections, the US Supreme Court issued an opinion for Indiana v. EPA (2024) that ruled the Environmental Protection Agency as unconstitutional, as it didn’t exist in its current state nor did it have a direct precursor at the country’s founding in 1776. The EPA was created under President Nixon during a period of heightened scrutiny for the deleterious effects 20th-century industrial development was having on American waterways and air. Since then, the agency has been tasked with making sure the environmental rights of Americans are protected through the adoption of emissions and contamination standards.
The case Indiana v. EPA centered on a recent rule proposed by the EPA under President Biden, known as the Good Neighbor Rule, which required states that were upwind of other states to adopt tighter emissions regulations for energy drilling and production to protect downwind states. Several states sued over the legitimacy of the rule, which were all consolidated under Indiana’s case to SCOTUS. Although legal experts largely predicted that the Court, which has been increasingly skeptical of environmental protections in the past decade, would rule against the EPA, few expected the Court to go one step further and disabuse the entire agency altogether. Leading the 6-3 majority on ideological lines, Justice Alito wrote that “it was high time that this Court stop stepping around the EPA with piecemeal rollbacks and address the agency as a whole altogether.”
The opinion went on to reflect on the historical tradition of the country, pointing out how none of the Federalist Papers made any mention of the Founding Fathers wanting the government “to halt the development of industry with burdensome regulation,” and that therefore, there was no legitimate authority Congress exercised when it created the organization with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. At press time, Chief Justice Roberts filed a concurring opinion clarifying that the Indiana v. EPA opinion was “highly specialized to this case…and should not be taken as a binding legal precedent with regards to other federal agencies.”
Source: Substack