Justices' NRC Ruling Raises New Regulatory Questions
Energy attorneys Andy Kriha, Elizabeth Craddock and Jason Hill co-authored an article for Law360 analyzing the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas, which involved challenges to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) decision to grant a license to a privately owned temporary nuclear waste storage facility that is not co-located with nuclear reactors. The questions before the court were 1) whether the challengers could bring a lawsuit under the Hobbs Act, a procedural statute, and 2) if so, whether the NRC has the authority to issue these licenses under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Atomic Energy Act. The justices determined that in order to challenge an NRC licensing order, parties must be admitted to the NRC licensing procedure at issue; since that was not the case here, the challengers could not file suit. Notably, because the ruling addressed the procedural question, it did not make a determination on the merits of the question concerning the NRC's ability to license private, temporary storage facilities – though the majority opinion did express support for the commission's licensing authority. In this article, the attorneys provide background on the Hobbs Act, provide a detailed breakdown of the court's discussion and share implications of the decision.
The authors also published a Holland & Knight alert on this topic.