The plastics and chemicals industry has been unusually quiet about the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
Their response seems kind of odd from industries that spend so much time talking about how overregulation is a major problem. Maybe they’re reluctant to do a victory lap. Or maybe they just don’t know yet how the ruling is going to change how they’ll be regulated.
You can sense the caution in a statement from Plastics Industry Association Communications Director Camille Gallo. In a statement to Packaging Dive, she said the Washington-based trade group expects the decision to overturn Chevron “to have broad and far-reaching implications for plastics manufacturers.”
She added that the association “will be monitoring the resulting repercussions to current and future litigation,” particularly in EPA and U.S. Food and Drug Administration law, “and working with its members on the ruling’s impacts.”
A recent Chemical & Engineering News story, “Overturning Chevron is a ‘game-changer’ for the business of chemistry,” did not include any celebratory quotes from the American Chemistry Council or its members.
C&EN quoted Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and former senior attorney at EPA, saying that with the Chevron doctrine gone, he expects “a period of uncertainty,” where all EPA actions will be “under very close scrutiny in the courts in ways that they weren’t before.”
Steve Toloken and I touched briefly on the impact of the Chevron ruling in our July 9 Plastics in Politics Livestream. Since the main topic of the program was how plastics policy issues are increasingly being decided in court, rather than legislatively, you have to believe the Supreme Court’s decision is going to have a huge impact on the industry’s future.
Before industry celebrates too much, it’s worth considering another strategy: forget about the downward reactive spiral and go instead for the generative response. Peter J. Schmitt explained the strategy, and the reasons why it makes sense, in a recent PN op-ed column.
After all, pursuing success in court doesn’t really make the plastics industry safer, cleaner or improve its public reputation. It mostly just makes lawyers wealthier.