Attorney General Scott Pruitt Gets Small, Symbolic Victory Against The EPA
-
Logan Layden
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has been on a lengthy losing streak of late in his fight against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t hear his challenge to the regional haze rule. Rulings over the cross-state pollution rule and mercury and air toxics standards didn’t go his way either.
But chalk down today’s 5-4 SCOTUS decision as at least a partial win for Pruitt and adherents to the idea that the EPA is reaching beyond its authority to stifle the fossil fuel industry.
From The Associated Press:
The justices said Monday that the EPA lacks authority in some cases to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This rule applies when a company needs a permit to expand facilities or build new ones that would increase overall pollution. Carbon dioxide is the chief gas linked to global warming.
Oklahoma was among a number of states to join Texas et al v EPA, which challenged the federal agency’s interpretation of how it should regulate greenhouse gasses. Politico‘s Erica Martinson explains the somewhat complicated ruling:
The case decided Monday … questioned whether EPA’s earlier decisions to consider greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and to regulate vehicles’ carbon emissions automatically triggered requirements to regulate greenhouse gases under other air programs. EPA argued that it must include carbon dioxide in a pre-construction permitting program known as “PSD” and another air permitting program known as Title V.
Martinson goes on to report that the ruling was “largely symbolic,” will only affect a small portion of EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases, and in no way hinders EPA’s recently announced carbon emission goals.
Still, Pruitt is praising the Supreme Court’s decision.
“In this case, the EPA clearly overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act as part of the administration’s anti-fossil fuel agenda,” Pruitt says in a press release. “In siding with Oklahoma, the Supreme Court has placed an important check on the EPA and preserved state authority under the Clean Air Act.”
