Jody Freeman

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has demonstrated a deep suspicion of government regulation, a pattern aligned with the Trump administration and perhaps best exemplified by his dissent in the case of a killer whale that attacked a SeaWorld trainer...Kavanaugh, as well as some of the Supreme Court's more conservative justices, question a longstanding legal principle dictating that judges defer to agencies' interpretations of vague and open-ended statutes, as long as the interpretations are reasonable. They counter that if there's new problem to solve, Congress should address it with a new law. That would inevitably lead to less regulation, observes Harvard law professor Jody Freeman, who specializes in administrative law and environmental issues. "If you hamstring the agencies and say every time there's a new issue, every time there's a new problem ... you have to go back and get express permission from Congress, that's a way of saying, you don't want the agencies to do very much. Congress doesn't produce much new law now."

The Trump administration rolled out its proposal for gutting former President Barack Obama’s most sweeping climate change regulation Tuesday — a move that could also block any future Democratic president from trying to put it back together....Former Obama White House climate aide Jody Freeman expressed some concern that the court battle to follow could leave EPA with diminished authority to regulate greenhouse gases at all, unless Congress steps in with a new law. “There’s certainly a legal pathway in which a court could lock in such a narrow reading that it would be very problematic for a future administration,” said Freeman, who is now director of Harvard Law School’s environment and energy program. “There’s also a pathway in which a court could uphold what one administration does and leave room for another to change its mind.”

An op-ed by Jody Freeman. The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation moved Thursday to fulfill President Trump’s promise to undo landmark Obama-era rules requiring automakers to steadily reduce greenhouse gas pollution from cars and trucks and improve fuel efficiency through 2025. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, with the biggest share coming from cars and trucks. Yet the government now plans to freeze fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards indefinitely at levels set for 2020, thwarting progress on addressing climate change. To make sure it accomplishes that goal, the Trump administration also wants to strip California of its authority to set stricter greenhouse gas standards for vehicles sold within its borders, which the state is authorized to do under a longstanding provision of the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration has drafted a plan to freeze fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and light trucks, reversing the Obama-era push for cleaner vehicles and marking one of President Trump’s most significant regulatory rollbacks to date. As part of the far-reaching proposal expected to be released this week, the White House will also attempt to revoke California’s ability to set stricter tailpipe standards than those of the federal government...“It’s had a transformational impact,” said Jody Freeman, an expert in environmental law and a professor at Harvard Law School. “It was directly responsible for many advancements that make cars better, stronger and more efficient.”

...With the retirement of the Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who often served as a swing vote on the court, Mr. Trump has nominated a judge to succeed him, Brett Kavanaugh, who is considered more reliably conservative. “They may well feel emboldened by the fact that Kennedy is retired, and they will likely see more conservative justices,” said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard and a former adviser to President Barack Obama. However, Ms. Freeman noted that previous efforts to pre-empt such state-level authority have failed, a fact that also concerns Mr. Wheeler, according to people familiar with his thinking. “We’ve never seen a state-level waiver being revoked, and it’s not clear how that would work,” Ms. Freeman said.

There’s trouble in Trumpland, and California is caught in the middle..Revoking the waiver “would be unprecedented,” says Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor. “There have been dozens of waivers that California has gotten over the decades since the 1970s, and [the EPA] has never revoked one.”

Trump administration officials were putting the finishing touches on a strategy to roll back car pollution standards when they received a boost from an unexpected source: the Supreme Court. The announced retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the court, and the plan to replace him with a reliable conservative in Brett Kavanaugh, energized the regulators. They plan to go with the boldest option, including a challenge to California’s ability to set its own limits...Jody Freeman, a Harvard environmental law professor and an architect of the Obama administration’s fuel efficiency pact with California, said it’s not clear how Kavanaugh would view key legal questions around the fuel economy rollback. “I don’t think we have enough of a record on Kavanaugh’s views of state powers and federalism to be confident about how this particular challenge would come out,” she said.

..."I think for all of these rulemakings his judicial philosophy and his temperament is to be skeptical of important, big, far-reaching agency rules, especially if they are interpreting or adapting older stuff in novel ways," said Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. "It's all approached with this general skepticism toward overreach and ... He has no problem deciding not to defer [to federal agencies]. He has no difficulty."

...Of the judges who made Trump's shortlist, Kavanaugh was viewed as the most troublesome for environmentalists, said Jody Freeman, the founding director of Harvard's Environmental and Energy Law Program. That reputation might be overblown, she said. "You can't say that you always know the outcome with Brett Kavanaugh," Freeman said. "He's a very serious and very diligent judge, and he's shown himself to be persuadable."

The Trump administration is preparing to battle California’s tough car pollution regulations using an approach that federal courts have already rejected. Twice. Federal regulators are drafting a proposal that takes aim at California’s cherished authority to set its own smog-busting rules. A leaked draft of the plan that is being finalized for submission to the White House shows that it wouldn’t outright revoke the state’s ability to set pollution standards, but it asserts that a 1975 law prohibits states from setting their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions...The so-called preemption argument in the draft EPA-NHTSA proposal “looks like an effort to do an end-run around the waiver,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard environmental law professor.

The Trump administration's plan to scrap vehicle fuel economy rules would lead to a surge of oil consumption that independent researchers warn threatens to paralyze the ability of the United States to make crucial progress in confronting climate change...The Trump administration plan aims to revoke California's authority to stick to stricter emissions. Legal scholars are dubious that it would succeed. "They are doing a retread of arguments that were made during the Geroge W. Bush administration," said Jody Freeman, who was President Obama's advisor on climate change and now directs the environmental law program at Harvard. Two federal district courts rejected the arguments at that time, she said.

A coalition led by California sued the Trump administration over car emissions rules on Tuesday, escalating a revolt against a proposed rollback of fuel economy standards that threatens to split the country’s auto market. In a lawsuit filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, California and its coalition — 16 other states and the District of Columbia — called the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken auto emissions rules unlawful and accused the agency of failing to follow its own regulations, and of violating the Clean Air Act...It is not yet clear if the E.P.A. will take those steps, but Tuesday’s lawsuit could strengthen California’s legal hand if that were to happen. “This is a preliminary challenge. It’s a shot across the bow,” said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University who advised the Obama administration. “It sets the table to challenge the agency’s reasons for rolling back the rule, if they go ahead and do it.”

A lawsuit that California filed Tuesday challenging the Trump administration's plan to roll back vehicle emissions standards has more at stake than pollution limits: It might also affect whether the state can retain its unique power to chart its own course in regulating tailpipe emissions. Since 1970, California has enjoyed authority from Congress to implement its own, tighter vehicle emissions standards, which more than a dozen other states also follow. Vehicle emissions last year ranked the greatest source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S...The EPA, meanwhile, "could basically ignore [California's] waiver and argue that California is pre-empted from setting standards" under the law that gives federal authorities the power to set fuel efficiency standards," or "EPA could decide to revoke it," says Jody Freeman, who served as the White House's counselor for energy and climate change from 2009-2010, and is a professor and director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School.

The news that the Trump administration is expected to roll back Obama-era EPA regulations on car emissions and fuel efficiency standards is tough to swallow for Harvard Law professor Jody Freeman. She negotiated those standards with the auto industry in 2009 and 2010 as a counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama White House. “It was kind of a historic achievement,” she said. “And it’s pretty dramatic to think that they might be rolled back now.” The standards require automakers to achieve an average of 36 miles per gallon across their car models by 2025. That's about 10 mpg over the standards in effect for 2018 models.

The Trump administration is expected to launch an effort in coming days to weaken greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards for automobiles, handing a victory to car manufacturers and giving them ammunition to potentially roll back industry standards worldwide...As a result, the automakers’ victory might come with unexpected headaches for them, said Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor and former counsel to the Obama administration. For instance, if the rest of the world moves toward stricter rules anyway, the American market could find itself an industry laggard, ceding leadership in clean vehicle technology to markets like China or the European Union. “I don’t really know if the auto industry wants what this administration might be doing,” she said. “It might be like the dog that caught the car.”

President Trump has made rolling back regulations a top priority for his administration, and U.S. EPA has been leading that charge. But the agency faces formidable challenges in federal courts. Of 25 deregulatory actions taken by EPA in the Trump era, six have been challenged in court, according to an analysis by E&E News...EPA's deregulatory actions have taken a variety of forms, said Jody Freeman, founding director of Harvard Law School's energy and environmental law program, who served as a climate adviser for President Obama. In some cases, EPA has tried to suspend or delay compliance deadlines. In other cases, the agency has delayed rules themselves or missed deadlines in statutes, she said. "I think there's a concerted effort here to really throw everything possible at the Obama administration's environmental protection agenda," Freeman said. "That means trying every trick in the book."

The story of President Trump's energy policy centers on removing regulations. He says he's good at it — even the best. "We have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history," Trump said in his first State of the Union address. That's not necessarily true. But in some ways, it's not necessarily false...Much of the focus has been on EPA, where Pruitt has proved a deft field general, said Jody Freeman, another Obama climate adviser. After a delayed start, he's now staffed up with political pros and EPA veterans familiar with the rules they're tasked with changing or undoing..."Scott Pruitt has been among the most disciplined, so that's why people are really worried," said Freeman, who is now at Harvard Law School. "There's the contrast — Rick Perry over there shooting from the hip, and here's Scott Pruitt being careful."

The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States coastal waters, giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard...Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School and a former Obama climate adviser, said the latest Trump proposal was more about sending a message. In the Arctic in particular, she said, low oil prices and the decision by Royal Dutch Shell to give up all but one of its federal oil leases indicate drilling is not on the near horizon. “But the decision is a signal, just like the one Congress sent with ANWR, that Republicans want to open the nation’s public lands and waters for business,” she said.