The coal industry got an unexpected victory from a federal judge in West Virginia on Monday, who ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency did not properly account for job losses in the coal industry and other industries as a result of its regulations.
Federal District Court Judge John Preston Bailey of the Northern District of West Virginia ruled in favor of Ohio-based coal company Murray Energy Corp., saying the EPA does not have the discretion to ignore job losses as a result of its regulations, including the centerpiece of the president’s climate agenda, the Clean Power Plan.The victory came as a 10-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court is reviewing EPA climate rules, while a Supreme Court stay remains in place until all court action has concluded. It is not clear how the West Virginia court’s ruling will play into the higher court’s decisions, but the EPA likely will seek an appeal. “EPA cannot redefine statutes to avoid complying with them. Nor can EPA render them superfluous or contrary to their original purpose by simply defining them to be,” Judge Bailey stated in his decision.
“With specific statutory provisions like Section 321(a), Congress unmistakably intended to track and monitor the effects of the Clean Air Act and its implementing regulations on employment in order to improve the legislative and regulatory processes,” Bailey wrote. “The most EPA does is ‘conduct proactive analysis of the employment effects of our rulemaking actions,’ which is simply not what S 321(a) is about,” the judge said in his ruling, citing the crux of EPA’s argument. The National Association of Manufacturers, representing nearly every segment of industry in the country, said it supported the judge’s decision, saying the EPA has evaded what the law clearly states for years.
“Manufacturers are pleased to see that EPA will now have to properly evaluate the impact of its regulations on jobs,” the trade group said in a blog posted Monday evening. ‎However, the group said it is “disappointed” the judge’s ruling came years after most of the regulations at issue were finalized and implemented, and “companies regulated have already started complying.”
“The agency has rolled out tens of billions of dollars worth of new air regulations on electric utilities, energy producers, manufacturers, vehicles and other sources, and readily admits it had not done a single one of these mandatory job loss evaluations before finalizing any of those regulations,” the group said. “We hope EPA will comply with the law and routinely do job loss studies for each of its major new regulations before they are proposed, to ensure a better regulatory process.”
Murray Energy’s CEO, Bob Murray, who is a supporter of presidential nominee Donald Trump, applauded the judge’s decision. Trump has made restoring coal mining jobs in Ohio, West Virginia and other states a key part of his message when campaigning in coal country, blaming EPA rules for the significant losses the industry has endured in the last year with massive layoffs and coal company bankruptcies.
“This is a great day for coal miners in the United States, and for all citizens who rely on low-cost electricity in America,” Murray said. Bailey has directed the EPA to do a job-loss analysis for the coal industry within two weeks.
“The purpose of requirements like Section 321 is to get better regulations, the kind that achieve their environmental goals while preserving a strong economy,” the manufacturers’ blog post added. “And while the EPA made this promise virtually every time it issued a new regulation, the facts show that it never even bothered to do a Section 321 analysis any of those times.”
