CHARLESTON, W.Va. (Legal Newsline) – West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced that, along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, he drafted a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asking it to stop spending federal tax dollars on the halted Power Plan.
“The entire point of the Supreme Court’s extraordinary action in putting a stop to the Power Plan was to preserve the status quo pending the outcome of the litigation,” Morrisey said. “EPA should respect that action by leaving things the way they are until the courts have had their say.”
The letter was written as a response to 14 state environmental agency officials who were seeking assistance from the EPA related to the Power Plan. However, back in February, Morrisey and Paxton led 29 states in winning a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court related to the Power Plan. The court denied the EPA authority to enforce the rule.
“We welcome this unusual step by the full court, which confirms our long-held view that the Power Plan is an unprecedented and transformative rule of a kind the states have never seen from EPA,” Morrisey said. “We look forward to presenting our arguments in September.”