CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A federal appeals court has turned down legal challenges filed by Murray Energy and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey over the Obama administration’s proposed rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
In a ruling made public Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the suits over a proposed rule that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls its “Clean Power Plan.”
Writing for the court, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said that legal challenges to the EPA rule were premature because the rule had not yet been finalized.
“Petitioners are champing at the bit to challenge EPA’s anticipated rule restricting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But EPA has not yet issued a final rule. It has only issued a proposed rule.
“Petitioners nonetheless ask the court to jump into the fray now,” the judge said. “They want us to do something that they candidly acknowledge we have never done before: review the legality of a proposed rule. But a proposal is just a proposal. In justiciable cases, this court has authority to review the legality of final agency rules. We do not have authority to review proposed agency rules.”
In separate cases that were consolidated by the court, Ohio-based Murray Energy and Morrisey, a Republican, challenged the EPA proposal…