More than half the states are suing the Obama administration over the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate change agenda, with the number of business trade associations and other groups joining the states rising daily.
Twenty-six states’ attorneys general and utility regulators, as of Monday, are suing the administration, with 15 trade groups, labor unions and a host of individual utilities and companies.
Oklahoma and North Dakota are the latest states to file lawsuits after a 24-state coalition on Friday sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its Clean Power Plan, which seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The rules were published in the Federal Register on Friday, making them challengeable in federal appeals court.
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The Clean Power Plan is a key part of the White House’s push to secure a global climate change deal at a meeting in Paris that begins Nov. 30. The rules seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, such as coal, that many scientists say are harming the Earth’s climate.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday underscored the unprecedented number of lawsuits opposing the Clean Power Plan “as an aggressive restructuring” of the the U.S. energy system, overstepping the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act.
States, led by West Virginia, on Friday filed a lawsuit with 23 other states, which began the march of opposition to the climate rules. Those states are: Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the Arizona Corporations Commission and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
North Dakota and Oklahoma filed soon after with individual lawsuits.
The states argue that the Clean Power Plan goes beyond the EPA’s authority, violates states’ rights and is uncontitutional. A lawsuit filed by Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group in the country, makes a similar case, adding that the climate rules will drive up the cost of doing business for nearly every sector in the nation.
Beyond the chamber’s electric utility and mining industry members, “every industry will be affected by these rules,” said Karen Harbert, the head of the Chamber of Commerce’s energy institute. She said the Clean Power Plan will “irreversibly harm America’s power sector” and “raise the costs of every business that uses electricity.”
