Supreme Court: state energy plans illegally intrude on FERC authority News
Supreme Court: state energy plans illegally intrude on FERC authority

The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] unanimously Tuesday that state plans by Maryland and New Jersey impeded upon the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) [official website] authority under the Federal Power Act [text, PDF]. The states were subsidizing their in-state energy companies to build new electricity capacity in return for the option for those companies to market the energy through auctions. The court found [SCOTUSBlog report] that the effect of these auctions caused the regional prices of electricity in the Atlantic market to fall below what the FERC had concluded was necessary to assure the continued supply of adequate generation. The court consolidated Hughes v. Talen Energy Marketing and CPV Maryland, LLC v. Talen Energy Marketing [SCOTUSblog materials] and heard oral arguments [JURIST report] on the matter in February.

Collectively, recent federal legislation and technological innovation reduced barriers to entry in the electricity supply market leading to new developments such as demand response [JTLP student note], which triggered new legal challenges over the jurisdictional divide between the federal government and the states in US power markets. In January the Supreme Court ruled in favor [JURIST report] of the FERC over wholesale demand response. The court heard oral argument [JURIST report] in FERC v. EPSA on October 14. On behalf of FERC, the Solicitor General argued that Order 745 is a strong example of cooperative federalism, and the policy brings about billions of dollars in consumer benefits by lowering wholesale rates [SCOTUSblog op-ed]. The Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) [official website] argued that Order 745 lures retail electricity consumers to participate in the wholesale market, which is prohibited by the FPA. The court granted certiorari in this case [JURIST report] and consolidated the dispute with another challenge from the EPSA, EnerNOC, Inc. v. EPSA [SCOTUSblog materials], in May.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.