WASHINGTON – The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a potential stay related to the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor Plan.”
The attorneys general from West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana filed the stay application regarding administrative action for the 2015 Ozone Ambient Air Quality plan for regulating downwind emissions. The three states say the plan takes away the ability of states to monitor and control air quality standards with a broad federal plan that gives the EPA too much control.
The three states also say the plan would require many states to implement “draconian emissions cuts” to meet the standards of the EPA plan. The EPA says the policy is meant to air pollution that crosses from one state to another.
Morrisey
| File photo
“It is common knowledge that the country’s power grid is already stressed as it is, and now this administration has added more regulation that’s going to stress the grid even more,” Morrisey said after the February 21 arguments. “The EPA will keep trying to legislate and bypass Congress’s authority — and it has been settled by the Supreme Court: the EPA must regulate within the express boundaries of the statute that Congress passed.”
The three states also claim the EPA’s plan “is likely to cause electric-grid emergencies as power suppliers strain to adjust to the federal plan’s terms.”
The Clean Air Act allows each state to develop a plan to prevent emissions within its borders from significantly affecting other states’ air quality. The EPA then reviews each state’s plan, but that review is deferential, meaning if a state’s plan meets statutory requirements, the EPA “shall approve” it, regardless of whether the EPA has a better idea for how to accomplish the act’s goals.
In 2022, the EPA said it was rejecting the “Good Neighbor” air quality plans for ozone of roughly half of the country’s states, and revealed its own federal plan, which the agency finalized in June 2023 despite numerous objections.
Last month, Morrisey’s office secured a temporary reprieve from the disapproval of West Virginia’s plan. About a dozen states in total — due to litigation and interim rulemaking — are similarly exempt from the plan for the time being, but the EPA insists its federal plan still should apply to the remaining states immediately.
During Wednesday’s arguments, conservative members of the court seemed to be leaning toward blocking the policy. The court actually heard arguments in four related cases involving challenges to the policy. Some of the cases were brought by affected industries, such as natural gas pipeline operators.
The Supreme Court's three liberal justices seemed to think it would be wrong to intervene in the litigation because no lower court has yet ruled.
The “Good Neighbor Plan” introduced by the EPA last year would cut nitrogen oxide pollution from industrial facilities in 23 “upwind” states where emissions could cause pollution in “downwind” states. The EPA says it would lower premature deaths, emergency room visits and asthma symptoms.
The states would be able to come up their own pollution control plans, but the three states here – West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana – say they didn’t have enough time to do that.
