By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency will not be able to enforce a key rule limiting air pollution in nearly a dozen states while separate legal challenges proceed around the country, under a Supreme Court decision Thursday.

The EPA’s “good neighbor” rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — challenged the rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective.

The Supreme Court put the rule on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.

The high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution, including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked Democratic President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The court is also weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

A look at the good neighbor rule and the implications of the court decision.

What is the ‘good neighbor’ rule?

The EPA adopted the rule as a way to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states. Besides the potential health impacts from out-of-state pollution, many states face their own federal deadlines to ensure clean air.

States such as Wisconsin, New York and Connecticut said they struggle to meet federal standards and reduce harmful levels of ozone because of pollution from out-of-state power plants, cement kilns and natural gas pipelines that drift across their borders. Ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. People with compromised immune systems, the elderly and children playing outdoors are particularly vulnerable.

Judith Vale, New York’s deputy solicitor general, told the court that for some states, as much as 65% of smog pollution comes from outside its borders.

States that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, must submit plans ensuring that coal-fired power plants and other industrial sites do not add significantly to air pollution in other states. In cases where a state has not submitted a “good neighbor” plan — or where EPA disapproves a state plan — a federal plan is supposed to ensure downwind states are protected.

What’s next for the rule?

The Supreme Court decision blocks EPA enforcement of the rule and sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is considering a lawsuit challenging the regulation that was brought by 11 mostly Republican-leaning states.

An EPA spokesman said the agency believes the plan is firmly rooted in its authority under the Clean Air Act and “looks forward to defending the merits of this vital public health protection” before that appeals court.

The spokesman, Timothy Carroll, said the Supreme Court’s ruling will “postpone the benefits that the Good Neighbor Plan is already achieving in many states and communities.”

While the plan is on pause, “Americans will continue to be exposed to higher levels of ground-level ozone, resulting in costly public health impacts that can be especially harmful to children and older adults,” Carroll said. Ozone disproportionately affects people of color, families with low incomes, and other vulnerable populations, he said.

Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said he was pleased that the Supreme Court “recognized the immediate harm to industry and consumers posed by this reckless rule. No agency is permitted to operate outside of the clear bounds of the law and today, once again, the Supreme Court reminded the EPA of that fact.”

With a stay in place, Nolan said the mining industry looks forward to making its case in court that the EPA rule “is unlawful in its excessive overreach and must be struck down to protect American workers, energy independence, the electric grid and the consumers it serves,.”

Few states participate

The EPA rule was intended to provide a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution, but challengers said it relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate. In fact, only about half that number of states were participating as of early this year.

A lawyer for industry groups that are challenging the rule said it imposes significant and immediate costs that could affect reliability of the electric grid. With fewer states participating, the rule may result in only a small reduction in air pollution, with no guarantee the final rule will be upheld, industry lawyer Catherine Stetson told the Supreme Court in oral arguments earlier this year.

The EPA has said power-plant emissions dropped by 18% in 2023 in the 10 states where it has been allowed to enforce its rule, which was finalized last year. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In California, limits on emissions from industrial sources other than power plants are supposed to take effect in 2026.

The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. The states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Administrative overstep or life-saving protection?

Critics, including Republicans and business groups, call the good neighbor rule an example of government overreach.

“Acting well beyond its delegated powers” under the Clean Air Act, the EPA rule “proposes to remake the energy sector in the affected states toward the agency’s preferred ends,” Republican lawmakers said in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The rule and other Biden administration regulations “are designed to hurriedly rid the U.S. power sector of fossil fuels by sharply increasing the operating costs for fossil fuel-fired power plant operators, forcing the plants’ premature retirement,” the brief by Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Roger Wicker of Mississippi asserted. Rodgers chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Capito and Wicker are senior members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Supporters disputed that and called the “good neighbor” rule critical to address interstate air pollution and ensure that all Americans have access to clean air.

“Today’s move by far-right Supreme Court justices to stay commonsense clean air rules shows just how radical this court has become,” said Charles Harper of environmental group Evergreen Action.

“The court is meddling with a rule that would prevent 1,300 Americans from dying prematurely every year from pollution that crosses state borders. We know that low-income and disadvantaged communities with poor air quality will bear the brunt of this delay,” Harper said.

The rule applies mostly to states in the South and Midwest that contribute to air pollution along the East Coast. Some states, such as Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin, both contribute to downwind pollution and receive it from other states.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for Idaho hospitals to provide emergency abortions for now in a procedural ruling that left key questions unanswered and could mean the issue ends up before the conservative-majority court again soon.

The ruling came a day after an opinion was briefly posted on the court’s website accidentally and quickly taken down, but not before it was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The final opinion appears largely similar to the draft released early. It reverses the court’s earlier order that had allowed an Idaho abortion ban to go into effect, even in medical emergencies.

It does not resolve the issues at the heart of the case, meaning the same justices who voted to overturn the constitutional right to abortion could soon be again considering when doctors can provide abortion in medical emergencies.

The premature release marked the second time in two years that an abortion ruling went out early, though in slightly different circumstances. The court’s seismic ruling ending the constitutional right to abortion was leaked to Politico.

The ruling came in a case filed against Idaho by the Biden administration, which argued that doctors must be allowed to provide emergency abortions under a federal law when a pregnant woman faces serious health risks.

Idaho had pushed back, arguing that its law does provide an exception to save the life of a pregnant patient and federal law doesn’t require expanded exceptions.

Doctors in Idaho said that the law wasn’t clear on when they could provide abortions in emergencies, forcing them to airlift pregnant women to other states for emergency care on several occasions since the high court had allowed the ban to go into effect in January.

The justices found that the court should not have gotten involved in the case so quickly, and a 6-3 majority reinstated a lower court order that had allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect a pregnant patient’s health.

The opinion means the Idaho case will continue to play out in lower courts, and could end up before the Supreme Court again. It doesn’t answer key questions about whether doctors can provide emergency abortions elsewhere, a pressing issue as most Republican-controlled states have moved to restrict the procedure in the two years since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade.

In a similar case, the state of Texas also argued that federal health care law does not trump a state ban on abortion and the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state.

The Idaho ruling doesn’t appear to affect that finding. The Biden administration has appealed the case in Texas, leaving another avenue for the issue to appear before the high court. The justices are unlikely to even consider whether to take up the Texas case before the fall.

___

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool in fighting securities fraud in a decision that also could have far-reaching effects on other regulatory agencies.

The justices ruled in a 6-3 vote that people accused of fraud by the SEC, which regulates securities markets, have the right to a jury trial in federal court. The in-house proceedings the SEC has used in some civil fraud complaints violate the Constitution, the court said.

The SEC was awarded more than $5 billion in civil penalties in the 2023 government spending year that ended Sept. 30, the agency said in a news release. It was unclear how much of that money came through in-house proceedings or lawsuits in federal court.

The agency had already reduced the number of cases it brings in administrative proceedings pending the Supreme Court’s resolution of the case.

The case is among several this term in which conservative and business interests are urging the nine-member court to constrict federal regulators. The court’s six conservatives already have reined them in, including in a decision last year that sharply limited environmental regulators’ ability to police water pollution in wetlands.

The high court rejected arguments advanced by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that relied on a 50-year-old decision in which the court ruled that in-house proceedings did not violate the Constitution’s right to a jury trial in civil lawsuits.

The justices ruled in the case of Houston hedge fund manager George R. Jarkesy. The SEC appealed to the Supreme Court after a divided panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out stiff financial penalties against Jarkesy and his Patriot28 investment adviser.

The appeals court found that the SEC’s case against Jarkesy, resulting in a $300,000 civil fine and the repayment of $680,000 in allegedly ill-gotten gains, should have been heard in a federal court instead of before one of the SEC’s administrative law judges.

Jarkesy’s lawyers noted that the SEC wins almost all the cases it brings in front of the administrative law judges but only about 60% of cases tried in federal court.

The appeals court also said Congress unconstitutionally granted the SEC “unfettered authority” to decide whether the case should be tried in a court of law or handled within the executive branch agency. And it said laws shielding the commission’s administrative law judges from being fired by the president are unconstitutional.

Those issues got virtually no attention during arguments in November, and the court chose to resolve the case only on the right to a jury trial.

___

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.

After deliberating more than six months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said “nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge.”

Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

“Opioid victims and other future victims of mass torts will suffer greatly in the wake of today’s unfortunate and destabilizing decision,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The high court had put the settlement on hold last summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.

It’s unclear what happens next.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling marks a major setback for the families who lost loved ones to overdose and for those still struggling with addiction,” Edward Neiger, a lawyer representing more than 60,000 overdose victims, said in a statement.

“The Purdue plan was a victim-centered plan that would provide billions of dollars to the states to be used exclusively to abate the opioid crisis and $750 million for victims of the crisis, so that they could begin to rebuild their lives. As a result of the senseless three-year crusade by the government against the plan, thousands of people died of overdose, and today’s decision will lead to more needless overdose deaths.”

An opponent of the settlement praised the outcome.

Ed Bisch’s 18-year-old son Eddie, died from an overdose after taking OxyContin in Philadelphia in 2001.

The older Bisch, who lives in New Jersey, has been speaking out against Purdue and Sackler family members ever since and is part of a relatively small but vocal group of victims and family members who opposed the settlement.

“This is a step toward justice. It was outrageous what they were trying to get away with,” he said Thursday. “They have made a mockery of the justice system and then they tried to make a mockery of the bankruptcy system.”

He said he would have accepted the deal if he thought it would have made a dent in the opioid crisis.

He’s now calling on the Department of Justice to seek criminal charges against Sackler family members

Arguments in early December lasted nearly two hours in a packed courtroom as the justices seemed, by turns, unwilling to disrupt a carefully negotiated settlement and reluctant to reward the Sacklers.

The issue for the justices was whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves. Lower courts had issued conflicting decisions over that issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.

The Biden administration had argued to the court that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.

Proponents of the plan said third-party releases are sometimes necessary to forge an agreement, and federal law imposes no prohibition against them.

OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, with doctors persuaded to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.

The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

The Purdue Pharma settlement would have ranked among the largest reached by drug companies, wholesalers and pharmacies to resolve epidemic-related lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American tribal governments and others. Those settlements have totaled more than $50 billion.

But the Purdue Pharma settlement would have been only the second so far to include direct payments to victims from a $750 million pool. Payouts would have ranged from about $3,500 to $48,000.

Sackler family members no longer are on the company’s board, and they have not received payouts from it since before Purdue Pharma entered bankruptcy. In the decade before that, though, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of which family members said went to pay taxes.

The case is Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, 22-859.

___

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

___