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They would determine whether the EPA is acting within the powers granted to it by Congress, which is what only judges are qualified to do.
Previously, under Chevron, the courts would defer to the EPA as the experts to make that determination (with the understanding that congress could always pass more specific legislation if they felt the EPA was overstepping its granted authority)
What the Supreme Court has said is deferring to the agency is going too far, and that if congress wants specific things regulated then it needs to be specific in it's legislation. Prima facie that makes sense, except for two major problems: congress is not productive enough in passing legislation, and congress are not the experts
This means that when questions like this arise, it comes to the courts to be the ones who end up interpreting the statutes and making the determination on what "bad for you" means.
Or rather, judges have been given the power to make technical interpretations of law rather than just looking at the broad meaning of a law and leaving the technical interpretation to the agency.
See the overturning of the Chevron decision.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
Section 1417 of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) establishes the definition for “lead free” as a weighted average of 0.25% lead calculated across the wetted surfaces of a pipe, pipe fitting, plumbing fitting, and fixture and 0.2% lead for solder and flux. The Act also provides a methodology for calculating the weighted average of wetted surfaces.
Judges always determined if an agency was acting within its statute.
The question that Chevron settled, was what if the statute was too ambiguous? Congress used to update laws regularly, but those times are over. It can't legislate effectively anymore. A lot of our laws are ancient and they're designed for a bygone era that often predates even the computer, never mind the internet, modern medicine, etc.
Chevron said, judges don't get to make decisions in those cases. Because those would be arbitrary decisions. It's better to have third party experts make those decisions until Congress can catch up. And if Congress has a problem it can overrule them as it always could. Agencies set up processes to make the review open, to gather data and evidence, comments for the public, etc.
Now we have the worst of all worlds. Appointed partisan judges, with no oversight, no accountability, get to make monumental arbitrary decisions about how minutia of our lives work, based on absolutely nothing, with no review, no criteria and no relevant expertise at all. All while essentially having no code of ethics and being subject to lobbying.
This is defeatist, and misses the point. Congress should continue to update laws regularly and the SC decision provides an impetus for them to start doing so. Congress mandating the regulation also has the effect of Congress determining the scope of legislation. With Chevron, there's no reason for them to update laws because they just let, e.g., the EPA make up the scope of the laws themselves. (Why people will claim "overreach".)
The scenario this enabled is a new presidential administration would be elected who would fire the old regulatory leadership and hire their own, effectively allowing the executive branch to re-write the law every 4-8 years. There was a lot of opinion thrown around about how the SC decision is a power grab for the judicial branch and I just don't see it. They took power away from the executive and gave it back to the legislative, where it had been before Congress became useless.
Whether or not one agrees with this approach is worth considering, but man, talk about comments that demonstrate the author has "no idea what Chevron was about".
Ok. Well I have nothing to say to that. Enjoy your pollution, diseases and shortned lifespan!
The intended checks having failed, they're allowed to do this. You're old enough to know that "allowed to" does not automatically mean "morally right."
EDIT: Actually, let's bottom-line it: Stop pretending that pointing out any flaws in a democratic government is anti-democratic. That's exactly backwards.