A request from Gregg Philips from TS. Unite in prayer —> imminent SCOTUS EPA ruling
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✝️ Prayer Request 🕊️
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To elaborate on why it's not just the EPA but all federal agencies:
Article II of the Constitution says that law making is the EXCLUSIVE right and obligation of Congress. This would be a good thing because Congress is supposed to be answerable to the electorate.
Some time ago Congress started passing laws that delegate "rule making" to unelected executive branch bureaucrats. This is where the Deep State came from. A perfect example would be Obamacare. Legislation like Obamacare will have a definitions section, and in most cases "The Secretary" will be defined as whoever is in charge of the three letter agency involved in administering the law. In the case of Obamacare, the "The Secretary" is the secretary of Health and Human Services. Then throughout the law the various sections will read "The Secretary shall promulgate rules" to effectuate whatever over arching goal the law has. Using Obamacare again as an example, you can do a "control F" for the word promulgate and see that the word is used 91 times in the law:
https://www.congress.gov/111/plaws/publ148/PLAW-111publ148.pdf
The very first time the phrase is used in the law you can see that Congress is allowing "The Secretary" of HHS to define what a "dependent" is under the law:
‘‘(b) REGULATIONS.—The Secretary shall promulgate regulations to define the dependents to which coverage shall be made available under subsection (a).
Some people (like me) argue that rule making is just lawmaking by another name, and that it is totally unconstitutional for these three letter agencies to be essentially making the laws that govern our every day lives.
Delegation to the three letter agencies proliferated after the 1984 (ironic, no?) Supreme Court decision in Chevron. Wikipedia's summary of the decision isn't too bad actually:
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), was a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court set forth the legal test for determining whether to grant deference to a government agency's interpretation of a statute which it administers.[1] The decision articulated a doctrine now known as "Chevron deference".[2] The doctrine consists of a two-part test applied by the court, when appropriate, that is highly deferential to government agencies: "whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction [emphasis added] of the statute", so long as Congress has not spoken directly to the precise issue at question.
In that case the court held that the EPA could define the word "source" in administering a congressional statute governing the source of pollution.
Chevron has been a disaster and I know for sure that Gorsuch has questioned whether it needs to be overturned. I know people here won't like it but Scalia was a defender of the decision and general proposition that the court's shouldn't interfere with Congress' delegation of rule making, etc. That Gorsuch was Scalia's replacement was a huge problem for the left because they of course love the Deep State. I am sure many wished Scalia dead for decades. Be careful what you wish for LOL.
The ruling in this new EPA case would almost have to address whether Chevron should be overruled.