West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey asked the U.S. Supreme Court of Appeals Monday to issue an emergency stay of the Biden administration’s so-called “Good Neighbor Plan.”
West Virginia was joined by the states of Ohio and Indiana in seeking the emergency high court intervention. The rule, if allowed to take effect, would empower the federal Environmental Protection Agency to regulate downward emissions from the individual states.
Morrisey said Biden’s plan takes away the ability of the individual states to monitor and control air quality standards in favor of a broad federal plan that “empowers a massive and unresponsive federal agency in Washington, D.C. to establish unprecedented regulatory control of emissions.” In the application seeking a stay of the rule, Morrisey said Biden’s plan will require energy-producing states like West Virginia to implement to implement “draconian emissions cuts” to meet the standards set forth in the EPA’s plan.
“Our power grid is already stressed as it is and now this administration has added more regulation that’s going to stress the grid even more,” Morrisey said, adding in the application for the emergency stay that the plan “is likely to cause electric-grid emergencies as power suppliers strain to adjust to the federal plan’s terms.”
