The Biden administration’s push to curb planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas sector could face trouble from the “major questions” doctrine — a conservative legal theory that the Supreme Court has already used to invalidate another major climate rule. The brewing legal battle could become the latest test of the administration’s authority to fight climate change, write Niina H. Farah and Lesley Clark. The Environmental Protection Agency rule to limit methane emissions, announced last year as part of President Joe Biden’s rollout of U.S. measures during the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, aims to slash 16 million metric tons of annual discharges from oil and gas operations. That’s equivalent to the pollution from driving 100 million cars per year. Methane has 80 times the heat-trapping capability of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, making it a particularly powerful pollutant. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas fired the first shot against the methane regulations, attacking Biden’s policy Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “The EPA is once again trying to seize regulatory authority that Congress has not granted,” Paxton said in a statement. The “onerous” rule usurps the state’s role in setting emissions standards, he added. Rosalie Winn, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, countered that the rule is “firmly rooted” in EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. The once-obscure legal tool called the "major questions" doctrine garnered prominence in 2022 when the Supreme Court used it — for the first time ever in a majority opinion — to toss out a sweeping Obama administration regulation on climate pollution from power plants. The doctrine says federal agencies must have express permission from Congress to handle especially politically and economically significant issues — though it’s unclear just how “major” a regulation needs to be to trigger this extra judicial scrutiny. Opponents of a wide array of regulations, on topics including pipelines, nuclear waste and highway planning, immediately seized on the doctrine as part of their legal arguments. "It comes up in almost every case now," Michael Burger, who directs Columbia University's climate law center, told Niina and Lesley. "It doesn't seem like there's a particularly strong argument for it, but that's not to say it won't curry favor with some judges." Critics of Biden’s energy and climate policies also argue that implementing the rule would force the closure of hundreds of thousands of low-producing oil and gas wells that are largely operated by small businesses. Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said that could jeopardize 10 percent of U.S. oil production. Sgamma told Niina and Lesley that the Western Energy Alliance and its broader coalition of trade groups will likely sue as well.
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