In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court last month struck down President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The justices instructed lower courts to look skeptically on administrative agencies’ claims to divine “in a long-extant statute” a transformative power Congress never expressly delegated. That’s bad news for the executive beast.

Start with student-loan forgiveness. Education Department lawyer Toby Merrill argues that a provision in the Higher Education Act of 1965 that allows the secretary to “compromise . . . any right, title, claim, lien, or demand” also empowers the agency to cancel federal student loan debt. Not so fast. This provision applied only to the government’s private-lending program, which Democrats abolished in 2010 when they nationalized the student-loan market to pay for ObamaCare.

The Federal Claims Collection Act of 1966 establishes limited bases and strict procedures for when an agency may “compromise” debt. The 1966 act says the government may cancel debt when a “debtor is unable to pay the full amount in a reasonable time, as verified through credit reports or other financial information” or the cost of collecting the debt doesn’t justify the amount that would be collected. These restrictions bar the categorical debt cancellation that the administration is contemplating. Notably, while Congress expressly authorized the Education Department to issue student debt, it didn’t do the same for canceling debt.

Also in potential legal jeopardy: the administration’s sneaky electric-vehicle mandate. The Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate “the emission of any air pollutant” from new vehicles that “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The Biden EPA has set exceedingly stringent emissions standards, giving auto makers a choice between making more electric vehicles—which the feds deem to have zero emissions though they run on electricity generated by fossil fuels—and buying compliance credits from companies like

Tesla.

The EPA’s greenhouse-gas vehicle standards mirror the Clean Power Plan, which set infeasible CO2 limits for power plants that effectively compelled fossil-fuel generators either to build solar or wind farms or to subsidize their green-energy competitors.

Four conservative justices dissented from Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which allowed the agency to regulate greenhouse gases without express congressional authorization. A legal challenge to the Biden administration’s backdoor EV mandate could tempt the justices to revisit that earlier decision and put the brakes on all EPA climate regulation.

Is a dry drainage ditch in your backyard a “navigable water” and subject to EPA regulation? It could be, according to the Biden administration. The Clean Water Act authorizes the EPA to protect such waters, and courts have interpreted its authority to extend to wetlands adjacent to navigable waters.

Yet EPA bureaucrats have sometimes sought to extend their regulatory jurisdiction even further. A proposed rule by the Biden administration would empower the EPA to regulate any piece of land—regardless of whether it is navigable or water—that can “significantly affect the chemical, physical, or biological integrity of traditional navigable waters.” This would allow EPA to play “six degrees of separation” with Lake Michigan. Farmers and home-builders might be forced to obtain federal permits merely to move dirt around their property.

The high court will hear a case this fall asking it to clarify the limits of the EPA’s authority. Michael and

Chantell Sackett

of Idaho have spent some 15 years fighting EPA bureaucrats who deemed their small property a wetland despite having no water on it. Justice

Antonin Scalia

opined that Congress doesn’t hide elephants in mouseholes. Nor does it hide wetlands in water holes.

The justices could also soon be asked to clean up some unfinished business from the Obama presidency: the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. A 2012 Homeland Security Department memo granted protection to as many as 1.7 million illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The high court in 2020 blocked the Trump administration’s rescission of the program on procedural grounds. Justices

Neil Gorsuch,

Samuel Alito

and

Clarence Thomas

noted in dissent that the program was adopted “without any statutory authorization and without going through the requisite rulemaking process.”

Whatever DACA’s policy merits, it contravenes West Virginia and is almost certainly unconstitutional. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month heard oral arguments in Texas’ challenge to DACA, and a decision is expected this year.

If courts block these and other executive beasts, Mr. Biden may find he has little choice but to negotiate with Republicans to achieve some of his goals. Such compromises would surely bolster his public support. Who knows? West Virginia and the senator from West Virginia could end up saving Mr. Biden’s presidency.

Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.