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Comment by jgwil2 | Hacker News Reader

> California’s special right to set its own tailpipe pollution rules dates to the 1970 Clean Air Act, the landmark federal legislation designed to fight air pollution nationwide. The law granted California a waiver to set stricter rules of its own because the state already had clean air legislation in place before the landmark 1970 federal legislation.

If the law granted California the waiver, why is the executive (rather than the legislature) allowed to revoke it?

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The law allows the EPA to grant the waiver. It doesn't require them to do it.

Edit: pre-emptively nitpicking my own statement: the Act gives the EPA enumerated reasons to not grant the waivers.

Does this lead to a constitutional crisis over the EPA's ability to govern? It seems like the Feds have a difficult time using interstate commerce as a justification for the EPA's authority. In this case, California isn't attempting to regulate industry outside of the state (it just happens to be so powerful as to have that side-effect).

I feel like this is a move to destroy the EPA and make California pay the legal fees to do it.

> Does this lead to a constitutional crisis

I severely doubt it. Wickard v. Filburn is a solid bedrock of totally ignoring the intent of the commerce clause.

Supreme Court cases get deprecated without expressly being overruled, especially wartime cases. Stare decisis doesn’t require you to read a precedent for all its worth; only to follow it if it’s squarely on point. The ACA case found the individual mandate failed under the commerce clause notwithstanding Wickard.

> Does this lead to a constitutional crisis over the EPA's ability to govern?

No; it may add to the stack of legal disputes about the Trump Administration’s administrative actions allegedly exceeding statutory bounds and procedural requirements (including the requirement not to be arbitrary and capricious), but that's such a big stack already...

> I feel like this is a move to destroy the EPA and make California pay the legal fees to do it.

It's not about destroying the EPA, just its purpose of protecting the environment.

> The law allows the EPA to grant the waiver. It doesn't require them to do it.

The bigger nitpick is that it's not clear that the Clean Air Act allows for revoking previously granted waivers.

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