West Virginia v. EPA, 142 S. Ct. 2587 (2022)

After the Biden administration re-instated President Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, numerous states and organizations challenged it. Their primary argument was that the Clean Power Plan exceeded the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) statutory authority, arguing that because the regulatory initiative raised a “major question” of economic and political importance, the Court should not defer to the agency’s legal interpretations. Although at least one circuit judge had further suggested that the broad power EPA claimed under the statute would have constituted an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority, the Supreme Court’s majority opinion did not directly address any non-delegation arguments. It did, however, rely on the Court’s past decisions in cases like Brown & Williamson, King v. Burwell, and Alabama Ass’n of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, 141 S. Ct. 2485 (2021), to formally announce a “major questions” doctrine