WASHINGTON — Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized her colleagues on Friday in a scathing dissent on a case involving vehicle emissions regulations.
In her dissenting opinion, she argued that the court’s opinion gives the impression it favors “moneyed interests” in the way they decide which cases to hear and how they rule in them. The court had ruled 7-2 in favor of fuel producers seeking to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of California clean vehicle emissions regulations.
She also said she was concerned that the ruling could have “a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.”
With the Trump administration reversing course on many of Biden’s environmental policies, including on California’s electric vehicle mandates, the case is likely moot, or soon to be, Jackson wrote, making her wonder why the court felt the need to decide it.
“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens,” Jackson wrote.
The case said that the producers had legal standing to bring their claims, resting on a theory “that the court has refused to apply in cases brought by less powerful plaintiffs,” she added.
The decision has little practical importance now, but in future, “will no doubt aid future attempts by the fuel industry to attack the Clean Air Act,” she said.
“Also, I worry that the fuel industry’s gain comes at a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests,” she added.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has often faced claims that it is particularly receptive to arguments made by big business. The conservative justices have been especially skeptical of broad government regulations and they have consistently made it harder for consumers and workers to bring class action lawsuits.
Last year, the court overturned a 40-year precedent much loathed by business interests that empowered federal agencies in the regulatory process.
Some legal experts have pushed back, saying such allegations are misleading.
Jackson concluded her dissent by noting the court’s “simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of less powerful litigants — workers, criminal defendants, and the condemned, among others.”
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the majority opinion, responded to her claims, saying that a review of standing cases “disproves that suggestion.” He mentioned several recent rulings in which liberal justices were in the majority, including one last year finding that anti-abortion doctors who challenged the abortion pill mifepristone did not have standing to sue.
The bottom line, he added, is that the government “may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders.”
The underlying case stems from the EPA’s authority to issue national vehicle emissions standards under the federal Clean Air Act.
In recognition of California’s historic role in regulating emissions, the law allows the EPA to give the state a waiver from the nationwide standards so that it can adopt its own. The case focused on a request made by California in 2012 that EPA approve new regulations, not the state’s 2024 plan to eliminate gasoline-powered cars by 2035 for which it also sought a waiver.
The Republican-controlled Congress voted earlier this month to revoke that waiver.
