Why? This authority was intentionally granted by a democratic legislature. If it's too broad, the act can be amended. The "technocrats" are only in control of what we have voted to let them control. The text is pretty straightforward:
> The Administrator shall, within 90 days after December 31, 1970, publish (and from time to time thereafter shall revise) a list of categories of stationary sources. He shall include a category of sources in such list if in his judgment it causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
That is explicitly delegating these decisions to the judgement of the EPA Administrator. This is extremely normal, every government agency works like this.
Not really. The court's conclusion is that Congress didn't anticipate such significant consequences when they granted this authority, so the EPA has to wait for Congress to confirm they're ok with it. They're saying that yes the EPA has this power on paper, but "a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself", so surely they didn't actually mean to do that. Maybe they made a mistake, we have to ask again to be sure.
Maybe they did make a mistake, but if so they can fix it. I think what the court majority is saying here is patronizing and wrong. There's a perfectly normal process for Congress to amend a law if it accidentally gave up too much power.
On one hand you have democratically elected representatives (less democratic than a direct democracy, but still reasonably democratic) delegating power to the executive branch (who's lead is elected by the electoral college, which is substantially less democratic than direct democracy.) Stack the two of these together and the end result is less democratic than either considered in isolation. But you want to go a step further and empower unelected technocracts in the executive branch to ban harmless herbs if they claim they have "convincing scientific evidence" that marijuana is harmful. And I guess that isn't even enough for you; presumably you also object to the judicial checking the power of those technocrats.
I prefer that matters like this be handled in an actually democratic way. Cannabis was legalized in my state because I and others in my state voted to make it so. That's democracy. Technocracts making unimpeachable "scientific" decisions isn't democracy, it's a faint shadow of democracy. Referendums are democracy, and are the democratic way to resolve these sort of social disputes.
Why is passing a marijuana legalization bill democratic, but passing the Clean Air Act is not? I guess I am still not understanding the core of your argument.
When your state legalized marijuana, it delegated a ton of decisions to unelected officials - individual business licensing, labeling details, dispensary sanitation standards, valid medical applications, etc. There is probably a whole commission of unelected people who go through a formal rulemaking process which involves collecting feedback from people like you, just like the EPA.
It's ok if you don't like this model, but you can't claim it's not what Congress intended and not a normal state of affairs at the moment. It's just how the country works, we don't have Congress vote on every single pollutant, medical device, potential drug, import/export restriction, endangered species, etc.
