Environmentalists are trying to persuade a federal court not to rehear a lawsuit brought by states against President Obama’s landmark climate rules, in an apparent attempt to undermine future legal challenges against the rules.
“Even if the court had authority to hold on to these jurisdictionally defective cases, [petitioners] have not identified any good reason to do so,” the environmentalists say in an Aug. 1 letter to the court.
The activist groups, which support the president’s climate plan, sent the letter to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals over the weekend in a last-ditch effort to persuade judges not to rehear the case after it ruled against 14 states and the coal industry in June because the climate rules for power plants were not final.
The activist groups include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund and others who filed with the court in support of the Environmental Protection Agency in the previous lawsuit.
The groups are also engaged in a campaign to support the EPA’s climate rules, called the Clean Power Plan, which will be made final Monday and were at the center of the states’ litigation.
The rules place the onus on states to reduce emissions from existing power plants by 2030. The states argued in their lawsuit that the rules overstepped EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act because, they say, the EPA cannot regulate states’ emissions under rules that are meant to regulate power plants.
The environmental groups’ letter is in response to a July 24 request by states and the energy industry to rehear their case or stay a court mandate until new lawsuits are filed after the Clean Power Plan is made final.
Although the court had ruled against a previous lawsuit challenging EPA’s emission rules, it has not issued a mandate that puts its decision into effect.
The activists advise the judges not to be persuaded by the states’ arguments to preserve their “defective” lawsuit and to move forward with the mandate.
The court had ruled against the states because their challenge was premature, since EPA had not issued a final rule, only a proposed action, at the time of the initial lawsuit. The court cannot make a judgment based on a proposed rule that has not become law.
Now that the administration is about to finalize the Clean Power Plan, the states have indicated they will sue again and are asking the court to stay its mandate in the previous case to expedite the court’s review.
But this “judicial economy argument is patently weak,” environmentalists say. “Because the [court] panel had no authority to review EPA’s unfinished rulemaking, it properly declined to reach, or even discuss, the merits of petitioners’ statutory challenges.
“The only issues the panel did address … will be completely irrelevant in a challenge to EPA’s final rule,” the activists argue.
