West Virginia vs EPA

Extracted Attributes

• Court

  Supreme Court of the United States

• Holding

  Congress did not grant the Environmental Protection Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan.

• Citation

  597 U.S. 697 (2022)

• Legal Subject

  Environmental regulation, Clean Air Act, carbon dioxide emissions, climate change, administrative law

• Docket Numbers

  20-1530, 20-1531, 20-1778, 20-1780

• Full Case Name

  West Virginia, et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al.

• Key Legal Principle

  Major Questions Doctrine

Timeline

• The Obama administration issues the Clean Power Plan, which was later challenged in West Virginia v. EPA. (Source: web_search_results)

  2015

• Oral arguments held for West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency before the U.S. Supreme Court. (Source: web_search_results)

  2022-02-28

• The U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, limiting the EPA's authority. (Source: web_search_results)

  2022-06-30

List of counties in West Virginia

The U.S. state of West Virginia has 55 counties. Fifty of them existed at the time of the Wheeling Convention in 1861, during the American Civil War, when those counties seceded from the Commonwealth of Virginia to form the new state of West Virginia. West Virginia was admitted as a separate state of the United States on June 20, 1863. Five additional counties (Grant, Mineral, Lincoln, Summers, and Mingo) were formed from the original counties in the decades following admission. After the Civil War, Berkeley County and Jefferson County, the two easternmost counties of West Virginia, refused to recognize their inclusion in the state, and the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation attempting to reclaim them. In March 1866, the United States Congress passed a joint mandate assenting to their inclusion in the new state, and the Supreme Court of the United States confirmed this outcome in the case of Virginia v. West Virginia (1871). The West Virginia Constitution was ratified in 1872, replacing the state constitution created in 1863 when West Virginia became a state. Article 9, Section 8, of the West Virginia Constitution permits the creation of additional counties if a majority of citizens in the proposed new county vote for its creation and the new county has a minimum area of 400 square miles (1,036 km2) and a population of at least 6,000. Creation of a new county is prohibited if it would bring another county below these thresholds. Three counties (Greenbrier, Kanawha, and Randolph) have sufficient population (based on the 2020 United States Census) and land area to allow a new county to be split off. The remaining counties cannot be split, as either their land area would decrease to under 400 square miles, or their population would decrease to below 6,000. The role of counties in local government had been minimized under the 1863 constitution, which vested most local government authority in a system of townships based on the New England model. The authors of the 1872 constitution chose to return to the system used in Virginia, in which each county was governed by a county court with combined authority for executive, legislative, and judicial functions of the county government. In 1880, West Virginia amended its constitution and replaced the county court system with an arrangement that divides county government powers between seven county offices, each of which is independently elected: the county commission, county clerk, circuit clerk, county sheriff, county assessor, county prosecuting attorney, and county surveyor of lands. Counties have only those powers that are expressly granted to them by the state Constitution or by state statute. These powers include, but are not limited to, maintaining the infrastructure of the state, funding libraries, maintaining jails and hospitals, and waste disposal. Reforming public education became a county function in 1933. In May 1933, a county unit plan was adopted. Under this plan, the state's 398 school districts were consolidated into the current 55 county school systems. This enabled public schools to be funded more economically and saved West Virginia millions of dollars. Randolph County is the largest by area at 1,040 square miles (2,694 km2), and Hancock County is the smallest at 83 square miles (215 km2). Kanawha County contributed land to the founding of 12 West Virginia counties and has the largest population (173,906 in 2024). Wirt County has the smallest population (4,924 in 2024). The oldest county is Hampshire, established in 1754, and the newest is Mingo, established in 1895. Spruce Knob, located in Pendleton County, is the state's highest point at 4,863 feet (1,482 m). Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) codes, which are used by the United States government to identify counties uniquely, are five-digit numbers. For West Virginia, they start with 54 and end with the three-digit county code (for example, Barbour County has FIPS code 54001). Each county's code is provided in the table below, linked to census data for that county.

Web Search Results

• West Virginia v. EPA

  West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. 697 (2022), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court relating to the Clean Air Act "Clean Air Act (United States)"), and the extent to which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate carbon dioxide emissions related to climate change. [...] | West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency | | | --- | --- | | Supreme Court of the United States | | | Argued February 28, 2022 Decided June 30, 2022 | | | Full case name | West Virginia, et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al. The North American Coal Corporation v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al. Westmoreland Mining Holdings LLC v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al. North Dakota v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al. | [...] | Docket nos. | 20-1530 20-1531 20-1778 20-1780 | | Citations | 597 U.S. 697 (more) 2022 WL 2347278 2022 U.S. LEXIS 3268 142 S. Ct. 2587 | | Argument | Oral argument | | Decision | Opinion | | Holding | | | Congress did not grant the Environmental Protection Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act "Clean Air Act (United States)") the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan. | | | Court membership | |

• In the Wake of West Virginia v. EPA

  West Virginia v. EPA represents the latest assault on regulations by the federal judiciary. West Virginia v. EPA arose from a long-running lawsuit brought by a group of Republican attorneys general (led by the attorney general of West Virginia) challenging the Clean Power Plan, an EPA regulation issued by the Obama administration to limit global warming emissions from fossil fuel--fed power plants. The regulation sought to accomplish these reductions as inexpensively as possible by drawing on [...] West Virginia v. EPA involved a challenge brought by a group of Republican attorneys general against the Obama administration's 2015 Clean Power Plan, a then-defunct regulation aimed at limiting global warming emissions (Dennis and Eilperin 2021). The Obama EPA issued the regulation under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes the agency to set emissions standards based on the "best system of emissions reduction . . . adequately demonstrated." Under the Clean Power Plan, states [...] With its recent decision in the case West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court has raised major concerns about the future of drafting science-driven policies that benefit the public interest. In this case, the conservative supermajority struck down an Obama administration rule that set limits on global warming emissions from fossil fuel--fed power plants. The Court relied on the novel major questions doctrine to justify this outcome. The next few years will reveal whether and to what extent the

• West Virginia v. EPA: Implications for Climate Change and Beyond

  On the last day of its 2021 term, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that has far-reaching implications for climate change and the administrative state. West Virginia v. EPA held that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lacks authority under the Clean Air Act to impose emissions gaps by shifting electricity production from higher-emitting to lower-emitting producers. That so-called “generation shifting” approach, the Court said, represents a “major question” of extraordinary [...] The Inflation Reduction Act also amends the Clean Air Act to specifically refer to greenhouse gases as “air pollutants.” Although West Virginia v. EPA did not overturn prior determinations by the EPA that greenhouse gases are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act, such categorization arguably solidifies the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases. [...] The Court’s decision has immediate ramifications for the executive branch’s efforts to fight climate change, as the EPA will likely need to focus on emission reductions at individual plants rather than across the sector. And because the Court’s reasoning applies to any major policymaking effort by a federal agency, lower courts are likely to face a host of major questions challenges to agency action. More fundamentally, the newly sanctioned major questions doctrine reflects a Supreme Court that

• [PDF] 20-1530 West Virginia v. EPA (06/30/2022) - Supreme Court

  of performance” for their emission of certain pollutants into 2 WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA Opinion of the Court the air. 84 Stat. 1683, 42 U. S. C. §7411(a)(1). That stand­ ard may be different for new and existing plants, but in each case it must reflect the “best system of emission reduc­ tion” that the Agency has determined to be “adequately demonstrated” for the particular category. §§7411(a)(1), (b)(1), (d). For existing plants, the States then implement that requirement by issuing rules [...] Having decided that the “best system of emission reduc­ tion . . . adequately demonstrated” was one that would re­ duce carbon pollution mostly by moving production to cleaner sources, EPA then set about determining “the de­ gree of emission limitation achievable through the applica­ tion” of that system. 42 U. S. C. §7411(a)(1). The Agency recognized that—given the nature of generation shifting— it could choose from “a wide range of potential stringencies for the BSER.” 80 Fed. Reg. 64730. Put [...] restricting emissions from sources within their borders. Since passage of the Act 50 years ago, EPA has exercised this authority by setting performance standards based on measures that would reduce pollution by causing plants to operate more cleanly. In 2015, however, EPA issued a new rule concluding that the “best system of emission reduction” for existing coal-fired power plants included a requirement that such facilities reduce their own production of electric­ ity, or subsidize increased

• Unpacking West Virginia v. EPA And Its Impact on Health Policy

  At issue in West Virginia was whether the EPA's adoption of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) was a permissible exercise of authority under the Clean