Supreme Court halts Biden’s ‘good neighbor’ plan to curb smog

CNN —

The Supreme Court on Thursday upended a Biden administration effort to reduce smog and air pollution wafting across state lines in the latest decision from the high court that undermined the federal government’s power to protect the environment.

The decision is a win for the Republican-led states and industry groups that challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s “good neighbor” plan, which imposed strict emission limits on power plants and industrial sources in upwind states to reduce pollution for their counterparts downwind.

While the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to grant a stay technically doesn’t completely scuttle the plan, it places implementation of the Biden program on hold through what will be a complicated legal fight that will almost uncertainly continue past the November election and into next year – and possibly another presidential administration.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a 5-4 majority. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a dissent, joined by the three liberal justices, that said the court was intervening too quickly without seeing the full development of the case’s record in lower court proceedings.

“Our emergency docket requires us to evaluate quickly the merits of applications without the benefit of full briefing and reasoned lower court opinions,” Barrett wrote. “Given those limitations, we should proceed all the more cautiously in cases like this one with voluminous, technical records and thorny legal questions.”

Barrett’s dissent from the rest of the conservative wing is notable. During oral arguments for the case, she and the three liberal justices had questioned whether the Supreme Court should grant the request to halt the plan given that lower courts