Readers may recall the March 17, 2021 WSJ editorial nicely summarizing a February 2021 amicus brief filed on behalf of Energy Policy Advocates in State of New York v. EPA. That is the progressive AGs’ effort to orchestrate a sue-and-settle to impose stronger ozone standards as a means of forcing GHG reductions. (It is fair to view that move as the Patient Zero of what has emerged as a broader back-door approach to get around Congress having never provided EPA the authority to impose the GHG/climate agenda; EPA Administrator Regan described it as a “suite of rules” to force plant closures because climate.).
GovOversight wrote about the filing here.
The DC Circuit today granted Energy Policy Advocates’ late-February 2021 motion to file the brief (Joe Goffman’s Air Office at USEPA had dragged out the proceeding, insisting for 2 3/4 years that it just didn’t know what it ought to do: retain the Trump decision to not tighten ozone regs or sigh and shrug, more in sorrow than anger of course, and conclude that the AGs and Goffman—the parties having consulted with Goffman on this very project prior to his rejoining EPA, which Goffman did not disclose in his ethics onboarding process—were right all along).
The Court’s order instructing the clerk to enter Energy Policy Advocates’s brief allows the group’s findings to be entered as filed and in their own right rather than forced into combination with other amici’s comments.
This is particularly timely, as the House Oversight Committee has begun probing the Biden EPA’s renewal of sue-and-settle.