3 states ask Supreme Court to pause EPA 'Good Neighbor' emissions plan

West Virginia, Indiana and Ohio want the U.S. Supreme Court to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s "Good Neighbor Plan" because those states believe the EPA overreached its power by overruling each state’s air quality plan.

The states believe that, if their air quality plan follows statutory requirements, the EPA is bound to approve the plan rather than rejecting those plans an implementing one that it likes best.

“Again, the EPA, an agency comprised of unelected bureaucrats, has circumvented Congress,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. “The Supreme Court clearly stated the EPA must regulate within the express boundaries of the statute that Congress passed.”

The EPA rejected plans from nearly half of the states and then announced its own plan, which had been challenged in the D.C. Circuit. The Supreme Court request is to pause the EPA taking action until a ruling arrives in that case.

“The EPA’s rulemaking ignored obvious problems with its attempt to twist the Clean Air Act into a system of top-down regulation instead of the system of cooperative federalism that Congress intended,” the state’s application said.

West Virginia is one of a dozen states that are exempt from the overall EPA Good Neighbor Plan’ for the 2015 Ozone Ambient Air Quality due to previous litigation and this request is to block the EPA plan from applying to the remainder of states.

“Our power grid is already stressed as it is and now this administration has added more regulation that’s going to stress the grid even more,” Morrisey said, joining in writing in the application that the plan “is likely to cause electric-grid emergencies as power suppliers strain to adjust to the federal plan’s terms.”