CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading a coalition of 19 states have filed an opening brief in its landmark case against the Environmental Protection Agency at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court agreed to consider the states’ challenge to an appeals court ruling that the coalition says would give EPA virtually unlimited authority to regulate wide swaths of everyday life. The lower court decision endorsed rules that would devastate coal mining, increase consumers’ energy costs and eliminate countless jobs.
“The question before the Supreme Court is who we want making our nation’s most important, life-changing decisions," Morrisey said in a press release. "Do we want our elected representatives, who are accountable to the people? Or do we want unelected Washington bureaucrats to do whatever they wish?
Morrisey
"If West Virginia prevails, Congress will decide important questions related to our economy, the power grid, climate change and more — just as the Constitution intended it to do. If not, then EPA can arbitrarily implement regulations that increase utility bills, create job losses, close down coal plants and much worse.”
According to the coalition, the lower court erred by reading a narrow provision of federal law as granting EPA broad authority to unilaterally decarbonize virtually any sector of the economy, including factories and power plants.
Among other things, the coalition claims this is such a substantially important question that an administrative agency such as EPA cannot decide it unless Congress clearly says it can.
The coalition also says Congress must speak in even plainer terms before an agency can be allowed to upset the balance of power between the federal government and the states. No federal law includes such a “clear statement” here.
Morrisey and his coalition urged the Supreme Court to take the case in April, arguing the appeals court had ignored the February 2016 stay. That stay should have hinted that the high court viewed existing law as limiting EPA’s authority – not expanding it.
Without the Supreme Court’s intervention, the coalition has consistently argued the appeals court ruling could set a devastating standard and lead to decisions of great economic consequence based upon unlawful EPA regulations, not the rule of law.
The coalition says, if left intact, the lower court would grant EPA even greater authority than President Obama’s EPA originally claimed with its Clean Power Plan.
Morrisey led the brief with support from attorneys general in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming and the governor of Mississippi.
U.S. Supreme Court of Appeals case number 20-1530