Environmentalists Losing Key Supreme Court Ally

For 34 years, Justice John Paul Stevens has been the environment's champion on the Supreme Court, swatting away attempts to hamstring laws that protect the environment and upholding citizens' rights to sue polluters. On Friday, Stevens announced he would retire this summer, leaving President Obama with his second chance to shape the court.

Though he was appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975, Stevens soon came to be known as the court's most stalwart liberal. And on issues affecting the environment, Stevens consistently voted to protect the public health and safeguard our natural resources.

In fact, Stevens not only wrote the majority opinion in Massachusetts vs. EPA, a landmark decision which granted federal regulators the authority to force greenhouse gas emissions reductions if the pollution posed a threat to human health and welfare, but he was instrumental in getting the votes: According to PBS NewsHour's Kathleen Sullivan, Stevens used his charm, civility, and seniority to convince swing voter Anthony Kennedy to agree that Massachusetts had a right to compel the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases. As a result, the Bush administration was forced to scrutinize greenhouse gases, even if "it didn't wanna."

At 90-years-old, Stevens is the oldest Justice on the bench. Even if President Obama manages to seat a liberal in the face of indignant and wild-eyed opposition from conservatives, the new Justice won't be able to wield his or her years to help rally votes in support of the environment. Clear-eyed environmentalists can see a bumpier legal road ahead, and their praise of Stevens' service also serves as a call to the President to appoint a new Justice who is as green as Stevens.

Stevens' successor will "help determine the fate of basic environmental safeguards for decades to come," says Glenn Sugameli, founder of the website Judging the Environment. "Four of the remaining Justices unjustifiably attempted to gut the Clean Air Act’s global warming provisions, and to reinterpret the Constitution to selectively prohibit access to court in the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA case. In that case, Justice Stevens’s vote was decisive."

Since congressional Republicans smell blood in the water, a confirmation battle is already looming. And to make matters even worse, the New York Times reports that if Stevens' successor's confirmation hearings turn into an all-out brawl, it could suck the wind out of the proposed climate legislation's sails. In the words of Chelsea Maxwell, a former climate adviser to retired Senator John Warner, "The climate bill will either come first [before the Supreme Court hearings] or die."

It just doesn't get easier, does it?

Photo Credit: Steve Petteway