CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has joined a 20-state coalition in filing comments before the U.S. Department of Transportation to push back against a Biden administration rule requiring all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to reduce on-road carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050.
The coalition of AGs argues that Congress has not given the DOT authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“This administration will try everything they can to step on Congress’ toes and legislate from the White House to advance the president’s woke climate agenda,” Morrisey said. “This radical far left agenda is hurting Americans. Biden is bent-over backwards in transforming federal agencies to be climate police to target the fossil fuel industry as part of a larger partisan strategy.”
In the comments filed October 13 with DOT, the coalition expressed concerns that DOT’s Federal Highway Administration overstepped its legal authority by proposing this measure.
“Given the Supreme Court recently made clear in West Virginia v. EPA that even the EPA cannot use its existing authority to take unprecedented and unauthorized actions to address climate change, such action is clearly beyond the authority Congress has given FHWA," the coalition wrote.
The major questions doctrine was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in June when it decided West Virginia v EPA. The Supreme Court ruling in favor of West Virginia confirmed that Congress — not a federal administrative agency — has the power to decide major issues of the day.
The proposed measure also violates the principles of federalism by requiring states to implement a federal regulatory program.
The AGs noted that the Supreme Court has said that “the Constitution protects us from our own best intentions: It divides power among sovereigns and among branches of government precisely so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in one location as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day.”
Further, the AGs noted that FHWA issued a similar rule, which was repealed after the agency determined that the measure may duplicate “existing efforts in some States” and imposed “unnecessary burdens on State DOTs and MPOs [Metropolitan planning organization] that were not contemplated by Congress.”
Morrisey joined the Kentucky-led comments along with the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.