Archives For environmental regulation

A Judicial Nod to Empirically-Based Regulation

Alden Abbott —  1 March 2018

The cause of basing regulation on evidence-based empirical science (rather than mere negative publicity) – and of preventing regulatory interference with First Amendment commercial speech rights – got a judicial boost on February 26.

Specifically, in National Association of Wheat Growers et al. v. Zeise (Monsanto Case), a California federal district court judge preliminarily enjoined application against Monsanto of a labeling requirement imposed by a California regulatory law, Proposition 65.  Proposition 65 mandates that the Governor of California publish a list of chemicals known to the State to cause cancer, and also prohibits any person in the course of doing business from knowingly and intentionally exposing anyone to the listed chemicals without a prior “clear and reasonable” warning.  In this case, California sought to make Monsanto place warning labels on its popular Roundup weed killer products, stating that glyphosate, a widely-used herbicide and key Roundup ingredient, was known to cause cancer.  Monsanto, joined by various agribusiness entities, sued to enjoin California from taking that action.  Judge William Shubb concluded that there was insufficient evidence that the active ingredient in Roundup causes cancer, and that requiring Roundup to publish warning labels would violate Monsanto’s First Amendment rights by compelling it to engage in false and misleading speech.  Salient excerpts from Judge Shubb’s opinion are set forth below:

[When, as here, it compels commercial speech, in order to satisfy the First Amendment,] [t]he State has the burden of demonstrating that a disclosure requirement is purely factual and uncontroversial, not unduly burdensome, and reasonably related to a substantial government interest. . . .  The dispute in the present case is over whether the compelled disclosure is of purely factual and uncontroversial information. In this context, “uncontroversial” “refers to the factual accuracy of the compelled disclosure, not to its subjective impact on the audience.” [citation omitted]

 On the evidence before the court, the required warning for glyphosate does not appear to be factually accurate and uncontroversial because it conveys the message that glyphosate’s carcinogenicity is an undisputed fact, when almost all other regulators have concluded that there is insufficient evidence that glyphosate causes cancer. . . .

It is inherently misleading for a warning to state that a chemical is known to the state of California to cause cancer based on the finding of one organization [, the International Agency for Research on Cancer] (which as noted above, only found that substance is probably carcinogenic), when apparently all other regulatory and governmental bodies have found the opposite, including the EPA, which is one of the bodies California law expressly relies on in determining whether a chemical causes cancer. . . .  [H]ere, given the heavy weight of evidence in the record that glyphosate is not in fact known to cause cancer, the required warning is factually inaccurate and controversial. . . .

The court’s First Amendment inquiry here boils down to what the state of California can compel businesses to say. Whether Proposition 65’s statutory and regulatory scheme is good policy is not at issue. However, where California seeks to compel businesses to provide cancer warnings, the warnings must be factually accurate and not misleading. As applied to glyphosate, the required warnings are false and misleading. . . .

As plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim, are likely to suffer irreparable harm absent an injunction, and that the balance of equities and public interest favor an injunction, the court will grant plaintiffs’ request to enjoin Proposition 65’s warning requirement for glyphosate.

The Monsanto Case commendably highlights a little-appreciated threat of government overregulatory zeal.  Not only may excessive regulation fail a cost-benefit test, and undermine private property rights, it may violates the First Amendment speech rights of private actors when it compels inaccurate speech.  The negative economic consequences may be substantial  when the government-mandated speech involves a claim about a technical topic that not only lacks empirical support (and thus may be characterized as “junk science”), but is deceptive and misleading (if not demonstrably false).  Deceptive and misleading speech in the commercial market place reduces marketplace efficiency and reduces social welfare (both consumer’s surplus and producer’s surplus).  In particular, it does this by deterring mutually beneficial transactions (for example, purchases of Roundup that would occur absent misleading labeling about cancer risks), generating suboptimal transactions (for example, purchases of inferior substitutes to Roundup due to misleading Roundup labeling), and distorting competition within the marketplace (the reallocation of market shares among Roundup and substitutes not subject to labeling).  The short-term static effects of such market distortions may be dwarfed by the  dynamic effects, such as firms’ disincentives to invest in innovation (or even participate) in markets subject to inaccurate information concerning the firms’ products or services.

In short, the Monsanto Case highlights the fact that government regulation not only imposes an implicit tax on business – it affirmatively distorts the workings of individual markets if it causes the introduction misleading or deceptive information that is material to marketplace decision-making.  The threat of such distortive regulation may be substantial, especially in areas where regulators interact with “public interest clients” that have an incentive to demonize disfavored activities by private commercial actors – one example being the health and safety regulation of agricultural chemicals.  In those areas, there may be a case for federal preemption of state regulation, and for particularly close supervision of federal agencies to avoid economically inappropriate commercial speech mandates.  Stay tuned for future discussion of such potential legal reforms.

In Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Jurisdictional Competition, Regulation, Regulatory Reform, Truth on the Market , , ,
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How to Regulate: Externalities

Thom Lambert —  13 February 2017

Following is the second in a series of posts on my forthcoming book, How to Regulate: A Guide for Policy Makers (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017).  The initial post is here.

As I mentioned in my first post, How to Regulate examines the market failures (and other private ordering defects) that have traditionally been invoked as grounds for government regulation.  For each such defect, the book details the adverse “symptoms” produced, the underlying “disease” (i.e., why those symptoms emerge), the range of available “remedies,” and the “side effects” each remedy tends to generate.  The first private ordering defect the book addresses is the externality.

I’ll never forget my introduction to the concept of externalities.  P.J. Hill, my much-beloved economics professor at Wheaton College, sauntered into the classroom eating a giant, juicy apple.  As he lectured, he meandered through the rows of seats, continuing to chomp on that enormous piece of fruit.  Every time he took a bite, juice droplets and bits of apple fell onto students’ desks.  Speaking with his mouth full, he propelled fruit flesh onto students’ class notes.  It was disgusting.

It was also quite effective.  Professor Hill was making the point (vividly!) that some activities impose significant effects on bystanders.  We call those effects “externalities,” he explained, because they are experienced by people who are outside the process that creates them.  When the spillover effects are adverse—costs—we call them “negative” externalities.  “Positive” externalities are spillovers of benefits.  Air pollution is a classic example of a negative externality.  Landscaping one’s yard, an activity that benefits one’s neighbors, generates a positive externality.

An obvious adverse effect (“symptom”) of externalities is unfairness.  It’s not fair for a factory owner to capture the benefits of its production while foisting some of the cost onto others.  Nor is it fair for a homeowner’s neighbors to enjoy her spectacular flower beds without contributing to their creation or maintenance.

A graver symptom of externalities is “allocative inefficiency,” a failure to channel productive resources toward the uses that will wring the greatest possible value from them.  When an activity involves negative externalities, people tend to do too much of it—i.e., to devote an inefficiently high level of productive resources to the activity.  That’s because a person deciding how much of the conduct at issue to engage in accounts for all of his conduct’s benefits, which ultimately inure to him, but only a portion of his conduct’s costs, some of which are borne by others.  Conversely, when an activity involves positive externalities, people tend to do too little of it.  In that case, they must bear all of the cost of their conduct but can capture only a portion of the benefit it produces.

Because most government interventions addressing externalities have been concerned with negative externalities (and because How to Regulate includes a separate chapter on public goods, which entail positive externalities), the book’s externalities chapter focuses on potential remedies for cost spillovers.  There are three main options, which are discussed below the fold. Continue Reading…

In Amazon, Apple, Law & Economics, Platforms, Regulation, Taxes , , ,
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One Step Forward: The Supremes Add Some Bite to Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis

Alden Abbott —  29 June 2015

Today, in Michigan v. EPA, a five-Justice Supreme Court majority (Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, with Thomas issuing a separate concurrence) held that the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider costs, including the cost of compliance, when deciding whether to regulate hazardous air pollutants emitted by power plants.  The Clean Air Act, 42 U. S. C. §7412, authorizes the EPA to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants from certain stationary sources, such as refineries and factories.  The EPA may, however, regulate power plants under this program only if it concludes that such regulation is “appropriate and necessary” after studying hazards to public health posed by power-plant emissions, 42 U.S.C. §7412(n)(1)(A).  EPA determined that it was “appropriate and necessary” to regulate oil- and coal-fired power plants, because the plants’ emissions pose risks to public health and the environment and because controls capable of reducing these emissions were available.  (The EPA contended that its regulations would have ancillary benefits (including cutting power plants’ emissions of  particulate matter and sulfur dioxide) not covered by the hazardous air pollutants program, but conceded that its estimate of benefits “played no role” in its finding that regulation was “appropriate and necessary.”)  The EPA refused to consider costs when deciding to regulate, even though it estimated that the cost of its regulations to power plants would be $9.6 billion a year, but the quantifiable benefits from the resulting reduction in hazardous-air-pollutant emissions would be $4 to $6 million a year.  Twenty-three states challenged the EPA’s refusal to consider cost, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the agency’s decision not to consider costs at the outset.  In reversing the D.C. Circuit, the Court stressed that EPA strayed well beyond the bounds of reasonable interpretation in concluding that cost is not a factor relevant to the appropriateness of regulating power plants.  Read naturally against the backdrop of established administrative law, the phrase “appropriate and necessary” plainly encompasses cost, according to the Court.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas opined that this case “raises serious questions about the constitutionality of our broader practice of deferring to agency interpretations of federal statutes.”  Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonya Sotomayor, dissented, reasoning that EPA “acted well within its authority in declining to consider costs at the [beginning] . . . of the regulatory process given that it would do so in every round thereafter.”

Although the Supreme Court’s holding merits praise, it is inherently limited in scope, and should not be expected to significantly constrain regulatory overreach, whether by the EPA or by other agencies.  First, in remanding the case, the Court did not opine on the precise manner in which costs and benefits should be evaluated, potentially leaving EPA broad latitude to try to reach its desired regulatory result with a bit of “cost-benefit” wordsmithing.  Such a result would not be surprising, given that “[t]he U.S. Government has a strong tendency to overregulate.  More specifically, administrative agencies such as EPA, whose staffs are dominated by regulatorily-minded permanent bureaucrats, will have every incentive to skew judicially-required “cost assessments” to justify their actions – based on, for example, “false assumptions and linkages, black-box computer models, secretive collusion with activist groups, outright deception, and supposedly ‘scientific’ reports whose shady data and methodologies the agency refuses to share with industries, citizens or even Congress.”  Since, as a practical matter, appellate courts have neither the resources nor the capacity to sort out legitimate from illegitimate agency claims that regulatory programs truly meet cost-benefit standards, it would be naïve to believe that the Court’s majority opinion will be able to do much to rein in the federal regulatory behemoth.

What, then, is the solution?  The concern that federal administrative agencies are being allowed to arrogate to themselves inherently executive and judicial functions, a theme previously stressed by Justice Thomas, has not led other justices to call for wide-scale judicial nullification or limitation of expansive agency regulatory findings.  Absent an unexpected Executive Branch epiphany, then, the best bet for reform lies primarily in congressional action.

What sort of congressional action?  The Heritage Foundation has described actions needed to help stem the tide of overregulation:  (1) require congressional approval of new major regulations promulgated by agencies; (2) establish a sunset date for federal regulations; (3) subject “independent” agencies to executive branch regulatory review; and (4) develop a congressional regulatory analysis capability.  Legislative proposals such as the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2015), would meet the first objective, while other discrete measures could advance the other three goals.  Public choice considerations suggest that these reforms will not be easily achieved (beneficiaries of the intrusive regulatory status quo may be expected to vigorously oppose reform), but they nevertheless should be pursued posthaste.

In Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Regulation, Supreme Court , , , , ,
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