The White House's pick to fill the recent Supreme Court vacancy, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, previously issued the majority opinion in a 2013 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was "flouting the law" when it stopped work on the license review for the proposed nuclear waste deep geologic repository at Yucca Mountain. 

The case, which was originally filed by Aiken County, SC against the NRC, argued that the Court should order the NRC to comply with the statutory mandate required the Commission to act on DOE's long-pending license application to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. In a 2-1 decision, the court sided with Aiken County.

"The President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections," Kavanaugh wrote. "Of course, if Congress appropriates no money for a statutorily mandated program, the Executive obviously cannot move forward. But absent a lack of funds or a claim of unconstitutionality that has not been rejected by final Court order, the Executive must abide by statutory mandates and prohibitions."

Read the full Court decision here.