Federal Judge Appears Skeptical Of GQP Plaintiffs In MO Hearing On Biden Memo For Carbon Pricing
A federal judge yesterday appeared skeptical of a lawsuit brought by Republican-led states over President Biden’s executive order on climate change. Judge Audrey Fleissig of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri seemed inclined to toss out the lawsuit over Executive Order 13990, titled "Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis."
The Jan. 20 order established an interagency working group tasked with recommending a new social cost of carbon, which assigns a dollar value to the harm caused by 1 metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions. Led by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), a coalition of Republican attorneys general alleged in a March complaint that Biden lacked the authority to raise the key climate metric under the Constitution, which gives that power to Congress.
But Fleissig, an Obama appointee, questioned how Biden’s directive differed from former President Trump’s Executive Order 13783, titled "Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth." "Are you telling me that 13783 was also a violation of the separation of powers?" Fleissig asked the plaintiffs. "You have argued to me that this one is so unlike any other. … I want to understand why this is different," the judge added.
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In their lawsuit, the attorneys general argued that the working group violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to solicit public comments before issuing the interim social cost of carbon. The states also filed a motion that asked the court to block the interim estimate through a preliminary injunction. In their own brief, lawyers with Biden’s Justice Department urged the court to scrap the suit. Stephen Pezzi, a trial attorney at DOJ, said the red states lacked standing to sue under Article 3 of the Constitution, which requires plaintiffs to have suffered an injury. "In terms of an actual injury, what I heard mostly from Mr. Sauer today was about procedural harms, and in particular their inability to file comments on the interim estimates," he said.
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https://www.eenews.net/articles/judge-skeptical-of-republican-case-on-social-cost-of-carbon/