CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is declaring victory against the Biden administration’s Security and Exchange Commission mandate that would force business to track and report greenhouse gas emissions.
The SEC issued a stay April 4 regarding the mandate as a federal lawsuit in the matter continues.
Morrisey led a coalition of 25 state AGs in compelling the SEC to impose the temporary nationwide block.
“The Biden administration wants to radically transform the SEC run by unelected bureaucrats and make them champions of climate change, regardless of what the agency's functions are – Biden is creating a federal bureaucracy to suit his agenda,” Morrisey said. “The rule would provide for coordinated discrimination against areas of the country like West Virginia that depend most heavily on fossil fuels for energy.
“This is another attempt from Biden’s administrative state to target fossil fuel companies as part of a larger partisan strategy.”
The 500-plus page SEC rule is called “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.” Under that mandate, public companies would be required to produce disclosures concerning greenhouse gases and climate change.
It would require companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions they directly or indirectly produce and how climate risk affects their businesses. The companies would have to report on their climate risks, as well as risks related to the physical impact of storms, drought and higher temperatures.
Morrisey says the plan would cost businesses billions of dollars every year, and he argues the SEC cannot implement the climate mandate without an act of Congress.
The coalition is led by West Virginia, Iowa, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio. Those AGs were joined by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.
Hours after the SEC approved the rule last month, Morrisey held a press conference to announce West Virginia and Republican AGs from nine other states had filed a lawsuit to stop the rule that would standardize climate disclosures from companies about greenhouse gas emissions, weather-related risks and other issues.
The 896-page petition for review was filed in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. It asks the court to review the final SEC action taken on “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.” The 11th Circuit covers Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
“This suit deals with the rule released earlier today,” Morrisey said during that March 6 press conference. “We’ve been waiting for this for a very long time.”
The SEC idea was first proposed in 2022, but Republican-led states say it another example of the Biden administration’s overreach.
The SEC voted 3-2 to approve the climate disclosure rule, which will go into effect in 2026. Expecting pushback from GOP states, the final SEC rules would allow larger companies to decide if emissions from their own operations and the power they purchase is needed by investors.
“Petitioners will show that the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and otherwise is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law,” the petition states. “Petitioners thus ask that this court declare unlawful and vacate the commission’s final action.”
Morrisey called the rule “wildly in defect and illegal and unconstitutional.”
“Once again, this administration has gone on the attack against America’s energy industry” Morrisey said during his press conference. “But this time, they’re not using the EPA as their tool of choice. This is a backdoor move to undermine the energy industry.
“We believe we’ll prevail.”
Morrisey said the administration is using companies like a puppeteer.
“Biden’s administration is once again placing its agenda onto an unwilling public by forcing unrelated federal agencies and private companies to press its anti-energy agenda,” he said. “This rule also appears to have some serious first amendment problems as well. We have concerns with compelled speech. This is setting up a framework where the federal agency is forcing companies to put forth initiatives and disclose information that it might not normally want to do.
“This is yet another attempt to advance an agenda without statutory authority, and I, for one, am not going to let that happen.”
During a television appearance after Morrisey’s press conference, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said the legal action is “part of our democracy.”
“We endeavor to do things within the law and how the courts interpret the law,” he said, noting the SEC aimed to take into account the economics of climate disclosures, public feedback and the Administrative Procedure Act that governs agency rulemaking.
West Virginia and Georgia are co-leading the petition for review, joined by Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming and Virginia.
