The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate power plant emissions, in a case that legal scholars say could undermine Congress’s constitutional authority to delegate power to federal agencies. Some argue that such regulation — not just by the EPA, but in President Biden’s vaccine mandate as well — is unconstitutional because of a somewhat arcane legal doctrine called the “nondelegation doctrine.” This theory holds that Congress cannot delegate broad policymaking authority to government agencies.

 

Why does this argument matter? Our research finds that if the Supreme Court were to invalidate either the EPA’s authority or the vaccine mandate under this doctrine, it might unravel nearly every major law Congress has passed since World War II. Nearly every one of these laws involves delegating authority to U.S. agencies.