The Supreme Court will consider suspending Biden’s plan to tackle air pollution
The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it would hear arguments in February on whether it should temporarily stop the Biden administration from requiring factories and power plants in the Western and Midwestern states to reduce air pollution drifting into the Eastern states .
The courts short order has not suspended the program in the meantime or added the case to the merits of the court. Oral pleadings in cases that reach the court via an urgent request, as in this case, are quite rare.
The four consolidated cases concern the government’s “good neighbor” rule, which initially applied to 23 states and ordered them to take steps to ensure their pollution did not impact the Leeward states.
The rule required power plants and industrial manufacturers to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, which causes smog and is linked to asthma, lung disease and premature death. Prevailing winds carry the pollutant to eastern states with fewer industrial locations.
The Clean Air Act gives states the ability to come up with their own plans, subject to approval by the Environmental Protection Agency. In February, the agency concluded that 23 states had failed to establish adequate plans to comply with the revised ozone standards.
A wave of lawsuits followed, and seven federal appeals courts blocked the agency’s disapproval of plans submitted by a dozen states, bringing eleven states under the federal rule.
Three states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, along with energy companies and trade groups — have challenged the federal rule directly in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. When a divided three-judge panel of that court refused to suspend the rule while the case proceeded, the challengers asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
“EPA had to reject more than two dozen state implementation plans before the agency could adopt its national rule,” an urgent request said by various energy companies. “EPA’s disapproval of these state plans is currently under discussion in seven federal circuits all those courts has stalled the EPA’s disapproval of the underlying state plans. Yet EPA continues to implement the rule – no longer a uniform, national rule – despite it being enforced in the majority of states where it applied.”
The application of the three states urged the justices to block the new rule in light of the appeals courts’ rulings, saying that “the federal plan is already a failed experiment” and is “a mere shell of its original self.”
The EPA responded that the preliminary rulings on the state plans should not affect the national rule and that blocking them would have serious consequences.
“It would slow efforts to control the pollution that contributes to unhealthy air in leeward states, contrary to Congress’ express directive that sources in leeward states must take responsibility for their contributions to emissions levels in leeward states,” the agency said.
The letter added: “A suspension of the rule could result in years of delays in phasing in significant emissions reductions. Such delays would seriously harm the leeward states that suffer from emissions from their upwind neighbors, placing the entire burden of achieving healthy air quality on those states and exposing their residents to public health risks.”