By Charles Boothe, Bluefield Daily Telegraph
WASHINGTON, D.C. — West Virginia and other states are going to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop an attempt by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to transform the nation’s power sector through emissions regulations
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Monday the Supreme Court has agreed to consider the coalition of 19 states’ challenge to the EPA, which, if left unchecked, would have “unlimited authority to regulate wide swaths of everyday life. The lower court decision endorsed rules that would devastate coal mining, increase consumers’ energy costs and eliminate countless jobs.”
“Our case is one of the most important cases before the Supreme Court this session and the outcome would have a ripple effect across the nation and hit West Virginia particularly hard,” Morrisey said. “If West Virginia prevails in our case, Congress will decide important questions related to our economy, the power grid, climate change, and more—just as the Constitution intended it to do. If not, then EPA can arbitrarily implement regulations that increase utility bills, create job losses, close down coal plants and much worse.”
Morrisey said the issue is an “error” by a lower court that “read a narrow provision of federal law as granting EPA broad authority to unilaterally decarbonize virtually any sector of the economy, including factories and power plants.” …
