West Virginia Attorney General issued the following announcement on Feb. 24.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday, Feb. 28, in West Virginia v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a 19-state effort led by Attorney General Patrick Morrisey resisting the Environmental Protection Agency’s assertion of sweeping authority. Lindsay See, the state’s Solicitor General, will argue the case.
The case concerns EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Eighteen states, several coal companies and nearly two dozen amici have joined West Virginia in the suit.
“We are talking about a ‘wrestling match’ between the legislative branch of our federal government, the executive branch of our federal government, and the states,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “This case will determine whether Congress and the states, as opposed to an unaccountable federal agency, will decide how to address climate change. In addition to restoring constitutional order, a ruling in our favor will protect West Virginia jobs and ensure electricity in the Mountain State remains affordable.”
The case could mark perhaps the most consequential development in environmental law since the Attorney General won an historic and unprecedented stay of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan at the Supreme Court in February 2016.
The states’ challenge asks the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that endorsed that interpretation, giving the EPA virtually unlimited authority to regulate wide swaths of everyday life.
In particular, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals mistakenly concluded that a narrow provision of federal law grants the EPA broad authority to reorder virtually any sector of the economy, including factories and power plants.
Among other things, the coalition argues this asserted power presents such a substantially important question that Congress must expressly say that it gave that power to EPA. The coalition also asserts 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. And beyond these failings, the coalition describes how the text of the statute itself confirms that EPA retains only a narrower power to impose efficiency improvements at the source.
Rather than comply with the Clean Air Act, EPA has sought to sidestep Congress to seize regulatory power that would radically transform the nation’s energy grid and force states to fundamentally shift their energy portfolios away from coal-fired generation.
Original source can be found here.