Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee, is a reliable conservative juror likely to take a narrow reading of the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to control carbon emissions.
That view, shared by several of her future conservative colleagues on the high court, could make it challenging for a Joe Biden administration to push the bounds on tackling climate change through the federal agencies without new legislation from Congress.
Barrett “would not represent the majority of voters who believe climate change is real and want to see action,” said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. “Barrett has made clear her disdain for federal agencies and the public protections they issue, which puts our ability to tackle climate change directly in her crosshairs.”
Barrett, 48, could be more likely to uphold Trump administration rollbacks of Obama-era climate change regulations, which have taken a more limited view of the EPA’s ability to control greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, passenger cars, and oil and gas operations.
Nonetheless, Barrett, a former law clerk for Antonin Scalia and a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, has said little publicly about climate change or energy policy. And during her nearly three years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, she hasn’t authored an opinion in a major energy or environment case.
She isn’t a stranger to the energy industry, however. Barrett grew up in the New Orleans suburbs, and her father, Michael Coney, was an attorney for Shell Oil.
Barrett, like her former boss Scalia, is what’s known in the legal world as a “textualist,” believing that the Constitution and other statutes should be interpreted with the original intent of the text in mind. It’s a more rigid interpretation than some more liberal jurors, who see the Constitution as a living document, the interpretation of which can evolve and adapt over time.
Legal observers have suggested that Barrett could also take a more limited view of how much leeway the courts should offer to federal agencies in interpreting ambiguities in the law.
A 1984 Supreme Court doctrine, known as Chevron deference, generally allows agencies to interpret their own authority if the statute is unclear, so long as that interpretation is “reasonable.” Conservative justices such as Justice Neil Gorsuch, another textualist, have openly questioned that doctrine.
Reconsidering or limiting Chevron deference could further narrow the authority of federal agencies, which is particularly important for climate change, a subject that environmental statutes such as the Clean Air Act are largely silent on.
