CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is co-leading a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concerning a recent proposal to regulate greenhouse gases through the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
The August 9 letter, co-led by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, was in response to a July letter to the EPA from attorneys general of eight other states suggesting that the EPA wield “newly discovered authority” under the Clean Air Act in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in favor of West Virginia in West Virginia v U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“These states have a misunderstanding of what the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v EPA — the court clearly stated EPA must regulate within the express boundaries of the statute that Congress passed,” Morrisey said. “The EPA cannot exercise expansive power that Congress did not clearly give — either directly or indirectly — to reach the outcome our colleagues who wrote the letter urge.”
Morrisey
The letter from the coalition led by Morrisey and Cameron said using NAAQS, as the other eight states proposed, would not be consistent with the Clean Air Act and would be destructive. They urge the EPA to “reject the suggestions of the July 28, 2022 letter.”
Joining West Virginia and Kentucky in the letter are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming.