this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 273 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

For anyone curious, this bill is fighting against the conservative SCOTUS decision that basically said fossil fuel and other companies don't have to listen to the EPA or follow environmental regulations if the company has a "reasonable"(undefined) argument against said regulation.

So this law should get made. Get made good.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Regulations are "unconstitutional"? Hmmmmmmm 🤔 Is SCOTUS bound by anything? Seems like they can rule however they like.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think their argument is more that the agencies aren't allowed to be the ones to say how a law is applied as far as regulations go. If a regulation is vague enough the EPA isn't allowed to clarify anymore, it needs to go to a (more than likely rubber stamp) court where the judges decide, instead of, you know, anyone who would actually have expertise... It's legally "reasonable" but practically insane.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Why aren't the bodies allowed to say how relevant laws are applied? Isn't the whole point behind regulatory bodies that the government will grant regulators certain powers with legislation?

I'm not a legal expert, but in Australia at least there are a bunch of regulators that work to legislation, but they totally come up with extra clarifications and rules themselves within the powers they've been granted, and you are obligated to follow those rules.

For example: the fair work commission in Australia sets the minimum wage every year, no legislation required. Employers can't just decide they're unreasonable and not follow them, unless they want to be taken to court (or go to jail, in certain states like Victoria).

Now, I have no idea what the laws are that give the US EPA their powers, but either SCOTUS is totally out of line here, or the legislation sucks.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The (bullshit) scotus argument is that congress can't grant decision powers to federal agencies cause hurrdurr constitution.

Basically, for ~40 years we've run on a SCOTUS decision referred to as the "Chevron Decision." What that did is direct federal courts to defer to agencies on interpretations of relevant laws and statutes, because federal courts were being bogged down by every. little. bit. of. minutiae. around the practical application of a bills intention."Agency says brown, interested party says black, BOOM LAWSUIT" is an exaggeration but not by much. Instead, Chevron gives agencies the room for experts in the field to draft appropriate regulations etc in service of congress' bills. "Agency says brown, interested party says black, well too bad the experts say brown is the best choice." Can't tie them up in court over everything.

Now, with Chevron overturned, Republicans can start tying everything they dont like up in court again. Plus, with the hyper conservative activist SCOTUS judges, now they can run any regulation or policy straight up the appeal ladder to have them all ruled "unconstitutional" with only the occasional less important burner case turned down in a halfass attempt to look "impartial"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the explanation! And boy, does that sound broken.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Breaking the system is the goal of the federalist society (which selected them recent conservative group of judges in the SCOTUS, and many lower courts).

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

SCOTUS is unchecked by the rest of the federal government. The only thing that would limit their power is a constitutional amendment, which requires 38 states to individually ratify it at the level of their state governments, not their federal congresspeople.

There is literally no way for congress to affect the supreme court once it has 9 justices, or contradict its rulings on laws they call "unconstitutional", short of impeaching supreme court justices or packing the court with more than 9 justices. Once enough of the court is full of fascists or enablers, it's EXTREMELY hard to escape fascism without a constitutional convention.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You could instruct the federal agencies to ignore court rulings, effectively undoing Marbury vrs Madison.

That's a constitutional crisis, but what is the court gonna do? Call the FBI? Send in the military?

You can ask the Cherokee people what the court does with an uncooperative federal government, but you won't find any in Georgia.

Maybe that's just fascism with our side in charge though.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Is SCOTUS bound by anything?

flipping open my Lockean theory of self-governance

Strictly speaking, the power of government is in its ability to achieve (relatively) peaceful compliance. The SCOTUS decision creates an opportunity for individuals to behave in defiance of the written law with a certain fearlessness. A President can go full Andrew Jackson and tell the judges to enforce that decision, but he's still got to command a bureaucracy full of people who can be swayed in the other direction.

What happens to a regulation that nobody is willing to enforce? What happens to a federal regulation that runs afoul of state law, in a district where municipal/state law enforcement will enthusiastically arrest and local DAs prosecute a federal agent?

I would say that's the real power of the SCOTUS. Opening the legal door for disobedience and negligence at the federal level, while state-level revolt occurs downstream.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

In theory that was supposed to be the strength of SCOTUS, that being secure in their employment for life (or until retirement), they had no incentive to judge along party lines for fear of future prospects. However, we've seen that judges can still be both very partisan and entirely unqualified and we can now do nothing to remove them. Turns out bribery and threats still work on them

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

The Loper Bright ruling was that when taken on appeal that the courts no longer have to accept a reasonable agency interpretation over a reasonable (or more reasonable) interpretation by the other party.

And the rulings isn't just for the EPA but all other federal agencies like the IRS, ICE, and the FDA. This bill is a double edged sword depending on who has the executive seat.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (4 children)

There's at least a possibility of the executive having enough expertise to regulate reasonably. The courts don't have the resources, but they've grabbed that power to themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

For real. The regulations are the "reasonable" standards. If you can't meet the bare minimum you can fuck off.

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[–] [email protected] 185 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Can you imagine a full majority blue government again? Last time we got health care light, who knows what we might get a little of this time?

[–] [email protected] 97 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

Maybe some of that freedom your nutjobs keep banging on about.

Make no mistake that small progress is still progress and given the amount of money spent on regression, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

If given the choice of something better, never go for the other option because the first is not better enough

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago (12 children)

don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

This sentiment is way too rare. Personally I'm a fan of using "don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough"

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It needs to be selectively applied though. We should fight for perfection, but we shouldn't avoid small gains in favor of large aspirations.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago

That's what the saying means. It doesn't mean perfect isn't good. It means perfect is great, but don't let it stop good.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

just remember: "perfect" is a journey, not a destination. it something to strive for knowing full well that you'll never get there because it's impossible.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (14 children)

don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

This sentiment is way too rare

Except literally every time someone on the left points out the Dem leadership habit of inching in the right direction while not doing much to stop their fascist counterparts from yarding if not miling in the opposite.

What little progress conservative Democrats DO graciously deign to bestow on the unwashed masses is the equivalent of getting a 2% raise in a year where your unavoidable expenses such as food, shelter, and medicine rose by double digits.

That's not good. That's insufficient.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

the nutjobs will never get the freedom they want. they want freedom to step on others and freedom from accountability.

they do not have the same desires as you and i.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It’s a bit disingenuous to say we had a full blue government. Technically we had it but our majority in the senate didn’t really exist due to false Dems like Manchin

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Plus the filibuster requires 2/3, not a simple majority to get anything done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

But doesn't need 2/3rds to remove, only majority. Which then gets back to the "pseudo" dems that appear anything it gets close to having progressive legislation passed

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Manchin wasn't even in the Senate yet. Lieberman was an independent that endorsed Romney 3 years later.

There were senators from Louisiana and Missouri in that majority.

Also Franken wasn't seated until like June because of recounts and lawsuits. Ted Kennedy was on deaths door and passed away 2 months later. His replacement was seated a couple months after that and then Scott Brown won in fucking Massachusetts in January.

They ended up with something like 109 working days in which Democrats could override a Republican filibuster. They passed 2 major pieces of legislation. Dodd Frank and the ACA.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

I miss the days when the arguments were whether we should have universal healthcare or whether we should force insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions. Arguments over whether we should have a democracy or not just aren't the same...

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Great, now do Citizens United, Trump v US, Roe and maybe try Dred Scott again but where corporations don’t have all the same rights as people and can’t be criminally prosecuted.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago

And reverse southern pacific vs santa clara and end corporate personhood

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (3 children)

One step at a time bud.

If you try and do everything at once you get nothing done at all.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Unless you do everything at once with conflicting interests across different parts of "everything" and you get an omnibus bill, which is the only way to actually get anything done in congress nowadays (for some god-forsaken reason)

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago

Let's fucking go!

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The courts kind of already denying the authority of the legislature on this. These agencies were created and given authority by congress already.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they've gotten to the point of saying the legislature cannot delegate it's authority. If it stands it functionally makes modern government impossible. If Congress cannot delegate to the executive, and it cannot take on executive style decision like the Westminster system, the government just cannot function.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Let SCOTUS enforce it. Why anyone still listens to that nut job chorus is beyond me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

They won't have to. Lower courts do it.

Whats going to happen is that every time a corporation doesn't like a regulation, they will sue to stop it. If possible in the specific case, they will shop for the right circuit court that's stuffed with judges favorable to them. The regulation will be stopped from taking hold while the case is in process. The federal bench is already overloaded, so this will take years. The corp will continue as they were in the meantime.

Even worse, a corp can now bring up cases against old regulations that started affecting them. An old corp getting into a new area, or a spinoff subsidiary taking their old business, could challenge any regulation that suddenly affects them.

This isn't like, say, school integration, where the President helps out the enforcement by sending the National Guard. Everything happens within the courts, plus the agencies respecting a court ordered stop like they always have.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

They overturned the courts previous decision. Technically it wasn't a law before, it just was heavily implied (as in Congress specifically left things vague bc they wanted federal agencies to fill in the blanks in accordance to the Chevron doctrine).

Basically, there wasn't any part that was unconstitutional, they just said the court was overstepping their boundaries when they "created" the Chevron doctrine.

Edit: please read the comment below, it seems like my understanding wasn't quite right

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Out of curiosity, what would stop SCOTUS being like "Nah, this law goes against the constitution"?

It's my understanding that SCOTUS has the power to repeal laws. Wouldn't the only real way to codify would to put it in the constitution?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Until SCOTUS declares amendments to the constitution to be unconstitutional.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Here's my understanding as a layman, please correct me if I'm wrong.

SCOTUS could block the creation of a law if it was deemed unconstitutional, but even with a conservative SCOTUS, it's unlikely they would in this case. As in many cases, SCOTUS didn't overturn a law here, but rather changed their decision on the interpretation of the law, specifically the Administrative Procedure Act. If congress passes a law that explicitly delegates certain powers to agencies, or codifies regulations that had previously been defined by an agency, that would be harder to fight since the APA, as far as I can tell, does not prohibit it. Warren's bill is basically saying "if we can't implicitly delegate power to agencies to create regulations, we should at least be forced to quickly review suggested regulations to prevent them from getting stuck in congress."

Again, this is just my understanding as a layman. IANAL

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There was the Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. A case in which SCOTUS struck a provision in the Voting Rights Act as they declared it was unconstitutional. If you can declare a provision unconstitutional, what would stop SCOTUS from declaring an entire law unconstitutional?

We've already seen a SCOTUS decide it can do anything it wants.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

They didn’t rule it unconstitutional, they ruled it incompatible with the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act. So the law could change it.

Granted, they could later try to rule it unconstitutional, but it would kill Looper Bright.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

... Are we suddenly going to start fighting the supreme Court? Finally? Finally?

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