EDITORIAL: Supreme Court’s Clean Power Plan ruling shows what’s at stake

The sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has raised heated discussion regarding his replacement. Whether his successor is nominated by President Barack Obama or the next president, the selection will be a pivotal one for the future of the country.

For proof, look no further than the Supreme Court's most recent ruling.

Earlier this month, the court ruled 5-4 to halt President Obama's controversial Clean Power Plan. Part of the administration's enormous strategy to curb global warming, the plan would have forced coal-fired and natural gas power plants to cut carbon dioxide emissions by roughly one-third by 2030.

Many states opposing the plan — states whose economic activity is largely driven by the fossil fuel industry — rightly argued that it was unfair for power plants to be forced to spend billions of dollars to comply with a regulation that may very well wind up being overturned.

At 5-4 in favor of a stay on the Clean Power Plan, the ruling is an obvious sign of where the balance of the court is for issues such as these. By the narrowest of margins, the court rightly tapped the brakes on the do-something-now process. The court's order blocks President Obama's rules from taking effect until after a legal battle in appeals court and further Supreme Court appeals have played out.

With the plan, the president had ordered a complete restructuring of the American energy sector through regulatory fiat. The plan would give the Environmental Protection Agency the kind of authority that not even the president is provided, allowing it to coerce states into adopting policies that would never pass Congress — the abandonment of coal-fired power, cap-and-trade schemes, more aggressive transitions to more costly green power — to meet the arbitrary goal of reducing the country's carbon emissions 32 percent by 2030, from 2005 levels. This would dramatically increase power costs, stifle economic growth, reduce standards of living and decrease the reliability of the power grid.

And all of it would go down without a single day's debate in Congress.

As we've previously noted, imagine if Mr. Obama had tried to impose the provisions of the Affordable Care Act solely through rules issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, without the approval of Congress. As badly as Obamacare has worked out for the American people, at least it was subjected to a vote of elected representatives. That was not the case with the Clean Power Plan.

The decision was correct, and with the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia just four days later, it shows that Supreme Court nominations turn into political bloodbaths for very good reason: there's a lot at stake. The direction of the nation hangs in the balance with this appointment.