In the News

Peggy Shepard, the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council co-chair, gave the administration a grade of D in September for its environmental justice work so far, telling a New York University Institute for Policy Integrity event that, in order to do something as transformative as the administration is seeking, “you have to restructure . . . but that has not happened and that is really the crux of the problem, that structurally, nothing has changed in any of these agencies.”

The FTC voted 3-1 along party lines to issue the Junk Fees ANPR. The Junk Fees ANPR was issued following the issuance of a Petition for Rulemaking filed by the Institute for Policy Integrity in December 2021.

The issue represents one of multiple instances in which critics of strict climate- and energy-related rules are attempting to leverage this summer’s Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA that curbed the agency’s greenhouse gas regulatory authority under the major questions doctrine, which says that policies with significant political or economic effects require “clear” statutory authority. But Oct. 20 supplemental comments from the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University argue that West Virginia should not apply to FERC’s long-pending gas review policies, which would require consideration of upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions when assessing projects under the Natural Gas Act (NGA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The new study could add to calls to limit public health risks from gas stoves. Earlier this year, the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University pressed the Consumer Product Safety Commission to address such risks -- an effort that comes as California and various local governments seek to limit gas-fired appliances over climate change concerns.

If confirmed, Revesz would be uniquely positioned to help shield the president’s climate regulations from legal scrutiny, a challenge that has derailed the administration’s decisions repeatedly. While at New York University, Revesz tracked and evaluated the Trump administration’s poor record defending its environmental decisions in court.

Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity of New York University School of Law, lauded the FTC’s decision to implement regulation surrounding so-called “drip pricing” tactics in event ticketing, which that organization had pushed for in a 2021 New York Times Op-Ed and petition that paved the way for Thursday’s vote. “Drip pricing has no legitimate business purpose and harms consumers,” he said in a statement issued following the FTC’s decision. “Regulating this pervasive practice will save consumers both time and money, and make it easier to compare the actual prices of competing offers. Today’s notice represents an important step in the effort to protect consumers from drip pricing, and the Commission should move ahead with regulating this deceptive practice.”

EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) is urging the agency to begin to systematically quantify the environmental justice (EJ) benefits of its air pollution rules, a potentially sweeping recommendation that could help the agency justify stricter controls on mobile and stationary sources. The recommendation is spelled out in a Sept. 27 draft SAB report on EPA’s proposed phase 3 heavy-duty truck and engine rule recently posted to the board’s website ahead of a Nov. 3 meeting where the advisors are slated to discuss it. Meredith Hankins, an attorney with the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University law school, said it was noteworthy that the proposed rule included the first-time distributional impact analysis evaluating baseline conditions as well as the results if the proposed rule’s more stringent option were implemented.

Millions of Americans are still reliant on gas combustion for their furnaces, water heaters, clothes dryers, fireplaces, stoves, and ovens, not realizing the pollution they create both indoors and outdoors because of it. Gas appliances have fallen through the cracks of federal regulation in part because the EPA sees the Clean Air Act as charging it with overseeing outdoor air. “There’s no equivalent clean indoor air act,” said New York University’s Jack Lienke, co-director of the Institute for Policy Integrity and a co-author of a history of the EPA law.

A new report from several progressive groups urges EPA and other agencies to take “more and bolder risks” on greenhouse gas and other rules in response to the Supreme Court’s embrace of the major questions legal doctrine, underscoring debates on whether strategic caution or a “flood-the-zone” strategy is the best response for backers of strong regulation. For example, Earthjustice attorney Kirti Datla during an Institute for Policy Integrity event last month partially downplayed West Virginia as “a unique case” over the Obama administration’s specific Clean Power Plan -- suggesting that a variety of agency regulatory efforts in areas including vehicles and methane are unlikely to trigger similar scrutiny. But she also cited “deep thinking” going on within the environmental community on how to respond to West Virginia, including on what information needs to be before” agencies like EPA in the wake of the decision.

Last but not least, the Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA impedes governmental power to address the most difficult and threatening problem that humanity has ever faced: global climate disruption. Once again, the Court undercuts the ability of government to preserve the right to life of present and, in this case, future generations. Professor Richard Revesz confirms that the new major questions doctrine announced in West Virginia, and effectively applied in an earlier case National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, “casts an ominous pall over the nation’s regulatory future.” Even though Congress acted in August to re-empower the EPA by adopting a statute overturning the effect of West Virginia with respect to the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the new major questions doctrine will continue to impede effective climate and other health-related policies.