Scalia makes a blunder in EPA dissent

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a glaring error in his dissent from the court’s ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency’s cross-state air pollution rules earlier this week.

In his lengthy dissent, Scalia wrote an inaccuracy about an earlier case, in which the justice wrote the majority opinion himself.

{mosads}This led the court to quietly post a corrected version by Scalia on its website with little fanfare, the Associated Press reports.

Scalia assailed the EPA in his dissent for requesting the authority to use a cost-benefit analysis to determine how best to mandate reductions in emissions.

That is where the justice made his fatal mistake.

Scalia went on to say the case decided on Tuesday was “not the first time EPA has sought to convert the Clean Air Act into a mandate for cost-effective regulation.”

He cited the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Whitman v. American Trucking Association, in which the court said a cost-benefit analysis was not allowed under a section of the Clean Air Act. Scalia authored that decision.

However, it wasn’t the EPA that wanted to use a cost-benefit analysis to regulate, it was the trucking group who pushed for it.

The corrected paragraphs in Scalia’s dissent now simply refer to the earlier case, under a heading titled “Our Precedent.”