Supreme Court Says The EPA Has The Power To Control Pollution That Crosses State Lines

(This image is from killcoal.org.)

Texas produces more air pollution than any other state in this country. That's because Texas' GOP-dominated government has no interest in controlling that pollution, and the state agency designated to control environmental pollution has become little more than a rubber stamp for corporations to do whatever they want. It has gotten so bad that, if Texas was a country, it would be the seventh biggest polluting country in the world.

But the thing about air pollution is that it doesn't just stay where it's produced. It is carried by the winds to other states, and that is especially true of a big-polluting state like Texas. It ruins the air quality of several other states. And Texas is not the only offender. There are several other states that pollute their neighbors.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided rightly that it was wrong for states to pollute other states, and several months ago they issued a new set of rules -- rules that would force these offending states to stop the pollution (especially that produced by coal-fired plants). Of course this angered the teabagger governor and attorney general of Texas (and several other polluting states). Playing to their right-wing base, they said the federal government had no right to make them stop polluting and they filed suit to stop the new EPA rules.

And they found some judges in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia who were  crazy enough to believe them (although if the federal government can't stop one state from polluting another, I don't know who could). That decision made no sense, and the EPA appealed it to the United States Supreme Court. Last week, the Supreme Court issued their decision.

In a surprising 6 to 2 decision, the Court overturned the Court of Appeals decision. The six justices (Ginsburg, Roberts, Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) said the EPA did have the authority to force polluting states to reduce that pollution. The only two justices dissenting were right-wingers Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas (both of whom sold out to corporate interests long ago). Justice Alito did not vote either way.

This was a good decision, because no state should have the right to destroy the air quality of another state -- and some states, like Texas, have shown they will not act to stop the pollution until they are forced to do so.