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A coalition of Republican-led states and the energy industry have asked the Supreme Court to block the EPA’s “good neighbor” rule that would crack down on states whose industries are said to be contributing to smog.
Ohio Deputy Solicitor General Mathura Sridharan urged the court to take action immediately.
“The plan inflicts irreparable economic injuries on the States and others every day it remains in effect,” she wrote in the application.
“Worse still, the plan is likely to cause electric-grid emergencies, as power suppliers strain to adjust to the federal plan’s terms. To prevent these harms, the Court should step in now.”
The federal Clean Air Act lays out a competitive-federalism scheme in which the states and the EPA share responsibility for the nation’s air quality. The statute allows each state to come up with its own plan to prevent emissions within its borders from significantly affecting air quality in other states, Ms. Sridharan wrote.
The EPA reviews each state plan, but the review is supposed to be deferential towards the state concerned. The law provides that “if a State’s plan meets statutory requirements, the EPA ‘shall approve’ it, regardless of whether the EPA has a better idea for how to accomplish the Act’s goals,” she wrote.
In other words, “the EPA has power to impose a federal plan only if a State fails to submit a statutorily compliant plan,” but the agency “views its role much differently.”
At the beginning of last year, the agency said it would reject the air quality plans of about half of the country’s states and revealed its own federal plan that favored a nationwide approach to emissions reductions.
Over many objections, the EPA finalized its “Federal ‘Good Neighbor Plan’ for the 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality” regulation on June 5. The plan forces emissions standards on “23 upwind states,” Ms. Sridharan wrote.
“But due to a combination of litigation and interim rulemaking, a dozen of those States and over three-quarters of the emissions that the plan sought to regulate, are already exempt from the plan. Nonetheless, the EPA insists that its federal plan should still apply in the remaining States.”
Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which handles many regulatory matters, to halt the federal rule, but it refused to do so.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice for comment.
It is unclear when the Supreme Court will act on the emergency application.
