In 2022, the conservative Supreme Court curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of the Clean Air Act to limit emissions that contribute to climate change. In 2023, the conservative Supreme Court gutted the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to use the Clean Water Act to protect wetlands. In 2024, the conservative Supreme Court told the Environmental Protection Agency that it can’t issue a rule to protect one state from another state’s industrial site nitrogen oxide pollution.
This is what conservative justices bring us on the environmental front. They do the bidding of industries that give us unsafe air and unsafe water. They shield the industries that contribute to asthma and other lung diseases. If you extract oil and gas or build pipelines, they’re your best friend.But if you live, drink or breath, they don’t give a shit about you.
On this last ruling, Amy Coney Barrett couldn’t go along:
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the court’s three liberals in disagreeing with the outcome.
She wrote that the court had blocked a major air pollution rule “based on an undeveloped theory that is unlikely to succeed on the merits” when the legal question is finally adjudicated.
I’m not sure why she thinks this “undeveloped theory” of her four conservative colleagues won’t ultimately prevail. Making shit up as they go along is what they do, just so long as they produce the outcome their corporate sponsors desire. This is actually a more fundamental structure of the conservative majority than their pandering to religious fanatics. Yes, they took away reproductive rights American women had enjoyed for half a century, but decisions that favor those seeking to evade regulation are far more frequent than rulings on social issues.
Add in their decision that people have a constitutional right to bump stocks so they can mow down concert-goers more efficiently, and it seems like you can predict how this Court by rule by figuring out which decision will cost the most lives.
