Professor Frank Weighs in for Daily Journal on Climate Change and U.S. Supreme Court

On Nov. 9, the Los Angeles and San Francisco editions of the Daily Journal published an opinion piece by Professor of Environmental Practice Rick Frank titled, “Climate Change Heads Back to the High Court.” Read the op-ed.

The article analyzes a group of important climate change cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has recently agreed to decide. The key issue in those cases, led by West Virginia v. USEPA, is the extent to which the federal government has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from “stationary sources” such as power plants and factories.

The op-ed notes that the new cases are largely a product of dramatic policy shifts over the past four presidential administrations regarding national climate change policy.  Frank writes that the Supreme Court has in recent years become increasingly hostile to federal efforts to regulate GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act. He predicts that an increasingly conservative group of justices seems likely to reject the Biden administration’s efforts to limit those emissions from the nation’s stationary sources. And this, Frank concludes, would likely undermine the United States’ recent efforts to reestablish itself as a global leader in efforts to confront the looming challenges of climate change.

Richard M. Frank ’74 is a leader in the field of environmental law, Professor of Environmental Practice and the founding director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis School of Law.