The Supreme Court rejected Texas’s bid to axe federal approval of a nuclear waste storage facility, arguing the state did not have the right to bring its challenge in the first place.
In a 6-3 decision, the court in effect upheld the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to issue a license to a company that wanted to store nuclear waste off site from a power plant.
The opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said that Texas, as well as private company Fasken Land and Minerals, did not have the right to sue over the license.
“Under the Hobbs Act, only an aggrieved ‘party’ may obtain judicial review of a Commission licensing decision,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Texas and Fasken are not license applicants, and they did not successfully intervene in the licensing proceeding. So neither was a party eligible to obtain judicial review.”
Kavanaugh was joined by justices John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
The justices did not address the question in the underlying case, which was about whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be allowed to license private off-site nuclear waste storage sites.
The decision marks a reversal of the 5th Circuit, which allowed Texas’s case to proceed.
The case in question concerns a license issued in 2021 to Interim Storage Partners (ISP) that would have allowed it to store nuclear waste for 40 years in West Texas.
The dissent, authored by Gorsuch, argued that Texas and Fasken should be allowed to sue because they have the potential to be “aggrieved” by the decision.
“Radioactive waste poses risks to the State, its citizens, its lands, air, and waters, and it poses dangers as well to a neighbor and its employees. But, the Court insists, the agency never admitted Texas or Fasken as ‘parties’ in a hearing it held before issuing ISP’s license—and that’s the rub,” Gorsuch wrote.
“Both Texas and Fasken participated actively in other aspects of the NRC’s licensing proceeding. No more is required for them to qualify as ‘parties aggrieved’ by the NRC’s licensing decision. Both are entitled to their day in court — and both are entitled to prevail,” he added.
Updated at 10:39 a.m. EDT
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