Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc., Background Section 109(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act instructed the EPA to

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Whitman v. American Trucking Associations,Inc.,
Background
Section 109(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act instructed the EPA to set"ambient air quality standards the attainment and maintenance ofwhich in the judgment of the Administrator, based on [the] criteria[documents of Section 108] and allowing an adequate margin ofsafety, are requisite to protect the public health."The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had decided that thestandard making procedure delegated by Congress to the EPA to setair quality was an unconstitutional delegation in contravention ofArticle I, Section I, of the US Constitution because the EPA hadinterpreted the statute to provide "no intelligible principle" toguide the agency's exercise of authority. It also found that theEPA could not consider the economic cost of implementing a nationalambient air quality standard.
Decision
In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, theSupreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the Court ofAppeals' decision.[3] The Court affirmed that thetext of Section 109(b) unambiguously barred cost considerationsfrom the NAAQS-setting process. The Court wrote, "Whether thestatute delegates legislative power is a question for the courts,and an agency’s voluntary self-denial has no bearing upon theanswer.”[4] The Court determined that the scope ofdiscretion that Section 109(b)(1) allowed was well within the outerlimits of nondelegation precedents.[5] The Courtconcluded this based on prior holdings, noting it had only twicefound an intelligible principle lacking in a statutory delegation:one which contained "literally no guidance for the exercise ofdiscretion," and the other "conferred authority to regulate theentire economy on the basis of no more precise a standard thanstimulating the economy by assuring 'faircompetition.'"[6] Consequently, the Court remandedthe case for the Court of Appeals to reinterpret the statute thatwould avoid a delegation of legislative power.[7]
Concurrence
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate concurrence.He was not sure that the intelligible principle criterion served toprevent all cessions of legislative power.[8] Hebelieved that there are cases in which the principle itself isintelligible but the significance of the delegated decision issimply too great for the decision to be called anything other thanlegislative. He stated that he would be willing to reconsider thedelegation precedents in the future to determine whether delegationjurisprudence has strayed too far from Founders' understanding ofseparation of powers. The Court also held that EPA’s implementationpolicy constituted a final agency action subject to judicial reviewand that two statutory provisions for ozone, Subpart I and Subpart2, were seemingly in conflict and EPA must reconcile theseprovisions on remand.[9]
Justice John Paul Stevens also wrote a separateconcurrence, which was joined by JusticeSouter.[10]
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