A Gain and Retreat on Air Rules

The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling Tuesday upholding federal clean air laws should serve to undermine long-standing industry efforts to weaken environmental laws. But in the same stroke the court delayed enforcement of the Clinton administration’s stricter smog-cutting rules, raising questions about the ability of regulatory agencies in the Bush administration to keep pressing toward key environmental and health goals.

The issue before the court was whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must consider only pollution reduction when setting air quality standards, as Congress directed, or whether the agency can also consider the costs of regulation to business.

Under the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 and later amended, the EPA sets national air quality goals and states must devise plans to meet them. Four years ago, Carol Browner, then-administrator of the EPA, proposed tougher standards aimed at cutting smog and airborne soot particles. A coalition of truckers, auto makers and power plant operators mounted a challenge, arguing that unless costs are considered, the EPA’s standards are arbitrary. They said the language of the Clean Air Act indicates that Congress intended the agency to consider costs.

Not so, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for a rare unanimous court. Congress told federal officials to “protect the public health.” Said Scalia, who is known to favor a literal interpretation of the Constitution and statutory law, “Nowhere are the costs of achieving such a standard made part of that initial calculation.” The decision should deflate repeated industry challenges on cost-benefit grounds to other federal environmental laws, such as those protecting wetlands and endangered species.

At the same time, however, the high court handed industry a victory when it delayed enforcement of the same rules. The justices held that the EPA had ignored another command of Congress, which, in 1990, allowed many regions, including Los Angeles, extra time to meet older, more lenient air quality standards. Therefore, Scalia wrote, Congress would hardly have intended for the EPA to adopt the tougher 1997 rules and enforce them immediately.

The case now goes back to a conservative appeals court that two years ago expressed skepticism about the new air standards. However, if the appeals court frees her hands, there is no reason for new EPA chief Christie Whitman to back away from the latest clean air goals. Whitman’s announcement Wednesday that her agency will enforce strict new rules to cut diesel fuel pollution, beginning in 2006, is a welcome start. Southern Californians, who can see their mountains now and breathe easier than they did 10 years ago, will happily applaud her.