The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) denied a request for a stay of the Clean Power Plan 2.0 as the case continues to move through the D.C. Circuit Court. While environmental activists immediately hailed this as a major victory, what SCOTUS actually said is that the lower court needs to decide first.
With Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch concurring, Justice Thomas, who would have granted the applications for stay, said, “In my view, the applicants have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of their challenges to the EPA’s rule. But because the applicants need not start compliance work until June 2025, they are unlikely to suffer irreparable harm before the Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit decides the merits. So this Court understandably denies the stay applications for now. Given that the D. C. Circuit is proceeding with dispatch, it should resolve the case in its current term. After the D. C. Circuit decides the case, the nonprevailing parties could, if circumstances warrant, seek appropriate relief in this Court…”
The petitioners included the States of West Virginia and Ohio, the National Rural Electric Cooperative, the National Mining Association (NMA), NACCO Natural Resources, the Midwest Ozone Group, Electric Generators for a Sensible Transition, and the Edison Electric institute.
“While we’re disappointed that some of the justices failed to recognize the immediate harm to industry and consumers posed by this reckless rule, we look forward to continuing to make our case in the D.C. Circuit,” said Rich Nolan, president and CEO, NMA. “By constructing a rule that offers power plant operators the choice of either employing technologies that do not yet exist on a commercial, affordable scale or shutting down, the EPA has wrested control of our nation’s energy policy with neither the legal authority nor expertise to do so, all at the exact time that electricity demand is forecast to double. If this rule is allowed to stand the results for the American people and economy will be catastrophic.”
