Supreme Court temporarily halts EPA rule that limits interstate pollution

 

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Good Neighbor Rule,” which regulates interstate air pollution, in a ruling Thursday, the latest move by the conservative-dominated court against the environmental agency’s regulatory authority.

In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch granted a request from Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia to temporarily block the rule while litigation against it proceeds through lower courts. Gorsuch, whose mother, Anne, was EPA administrator under President Reagan, wrote that “we see one reason for caution after another” in allowing the rule to proceed.

He pointed to the fact that “at oral argument, even the government refused to say with certainty that EPA would have reached the same conclusions regardless of which States were included in the [Federal Implementation Plan].” The rule would have affected 11 of 23 states, with the remainder already tied up in separate litigation...more