TRENTON — The state of New Jersey has become the latest to join a multistate coalition urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a decision by D.C. Circuit Court on banning hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal has joined in filing the multistate brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court's decision that opened up the use of HFCs, known as a "super pollutant" and banned by the FDA in 2015. The ban was lifted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a 2-1 decision with an opinion by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh finding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not prohibit all the uses of HFCs.
“Climate change is the greatest environmental threat to our state and our planet," Grewal said in a statement. "That is why we are calling on the nation’s highest court to uphold EPA’s rules tackling especially powerful greenhouse gases. We cannot count on the federal government to fight for strict rules that limit greenhouse gases, and so it falls to New Jersey and my fellow state Attorneys General to do so.”
The brief labels Kavanaugh's decision as "plainly wrong" and an "Implausibly cramped" and "illogical" interpretation of the federal Clean Air Act, Grewal's office said.