A federal appeals court has imposed a stay on former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt’s final action as head of the agency before he resigned back on July 5.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 order Wednesday temporarily blocking Pruitt’s order to cease enforcement of Obama-era pollution rules for “glider trucks.”
Glider trucks, or simply “gliders,” are older tractor-trailer trucks that have rebuilt engines without many of the modern pollution controls. The Obama EPA allowed for a few hundred to be sold annually to limit the widespread use of the trucks under its emission program for big-rig trucks.
A group of environmental groups sued the EPA on Tuesday over Pruitt’s final action, asking the court to stop the order, which would allow the trucks to ignore emission standards as EPA moved to repeal them altogether.
The court said that EPA’s “no action assurance” memorandum dated July 6, 2018, one day after Pruitt resigned, be stayed pending further order of the court.
“The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” the court order read.
[Also read: New EPA chief Andrew Wheeler is a ‘different person’ than scandal-plagued Scott Pruitt]
