Who gets in, and where?

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: more Supreme Court opinions. WORLD legal correspondent Jenny Rough catches us up on five decisions the court issued last week.

JENNY ROUGH: This batch of Supreme Court cases is all about the courthouse door: Who’s allowed to walk through it and which door they get to use.

This first case tested the hinges of both … not the heart of the issue itself, but of the courtroom where it was argued and who has access. When the Food and Drug Administration denied RJ Reynolds’ application to market flavored vaping products … Reynolds challenged.

On its own, Reynolds could go to the Fourth Circuit where it resides, or the D.C. Circuit where the FDA is headquartered. But Reynolds asked retailers in Texas and Mississippi to join in and filed in the Fifth Circuit instead … hoping for a friendlier reception.

The F-D-A argued the retailers weren’t part of Reynold’s original application in the first place, so they shouldn’t qualify. But that didn’t fly with Justice Clarence Thomas:

JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS: If your argument is that only applicants are covered, what do you do with the language, “any person adversely affected?”

The high court ruled 7 to 2 … giving the retailers a key to that more favorable court. But it declined to answer the question about whether Reynolds must independently establish its right to be in the chosen court. That could have significant repercussions and may be an issue the Fifth Circuit will have to figure out.

Now let’s stick with the “where” question, but move from flavored vape products to other kinds of emissions. The next two cases both ask, Which courtroom do you go to when challenging the Environmental Protection Agency?

In one case, small refineries in Louisiana sued over a denial tied to renewable fuel standards. Normally, these kinds of cases happen in regional courts. But here, the Supreme Court applied an exception to hold, again, 7 to 2 that the case belongs in the D.C. Circuit … because the EPA’s justification for the denial applied nationwide.

The court took a similar look in its next decision—but reached the opposite conclusion. This one came from Oklahoma. It involved a rule about air pollution that drifts across state lines. The court unanimously held that Oklahoma and Utah could fight the EPA in regional courts … because this analysis requires the agency to consider a specific location and involves a local, fact-intensive examination.

So those cases hit on the where—namely, which courthouse door. Now on to two cases about who’s even allowed to knock.

The first of those comes from California, Diamond Alternative Energy versus EPA. Fuel companies challenged an E-P-A decision approving state regulations that require more electric cars and fewer gas-powered ones. The question before the court: Do the fuel companies even have a legal right to sue? Do they have standing?, is the legal term of art. To prove standing, they must show they’ve suffered an injury that a court decision can fix.

At oral argument, lawyer Jeffrey Wall argued they did.

JEFFREY WALL: It doesn’t take much common sense to figure out that if California limits the number of cars that can run on gas, automakers will make fewer cars that run on gas.

A decrease in the sale of cars will decrease the sale of fuel. Overturning the EPA’s approval of California’s strict emissions standards would fix it. In a 7 to 2 decision, the court agreed the fuel companies do have standing. So in the Diamond case, the court said yes, you’ve got a key. You’ve shown harm, you’re in, you get your day in court … but you still have to prove your case.

But in the next case, the Court didn’t just keep the door shut … it said the challengers had no business knocking. In legal terms, they lacked standing.

That case involves nuclear waste. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a license to allow a private company to store spent nuclear fuel in West Texas. Texas along with an oil and gas company filed a lawsuit. But they have to show they participated as parties in the Commission’s licensing proceedings. Texas had submitted comments … and the oil company applied to intervene … but neither was officially admitted. Here’s Justice Elena Kagan during oral argument:

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: It seems to me “party” means somebody who has participated in an agency proceeding with the degree of formality required for that proceeding. … I don’t see how we can say that you were a party.

In a 6 to 3 decision the court held that because neither Texas nor the oil company were parties, they had no standing to challenge the Commission in court.

Okay, that’s it for now. We expect more Supreme Court decisions later this week. We’ll keep our eye on them.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough in Washington, D.C.

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