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The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request from a Kentucky utility company to temporarily block an Environmental Protection Agency rule governing the disposal of coal ash while a challenge to it moves forward in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The denial came just under six months after the Supreme Court, in Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, granted a plea from three states (as well as several companies and trade groups) to put on hold an EPA rule intended to reduce air pollution from power plants and other industrial facilities. Since then, however, the justices have turned down several other requests to temporarily block EPA rules while litigation continues in the lower courts.
The utility company, East Kentucky Power Cooperative, came to the court in early November, calling the rule “yet another aggressive attempt by EPA to push the envelope of its regulatory authority.” If the rule is not put on hold, it said, it would soon have to “ramp up” its efforts to comply, “culminating in the commencement of construction activities in March 2025.”
Representing the EPA, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the justices not to intervene, telling them that the utility is unlikely to succeed in its challenge. Moreover, she added, the utility’s claim that it will be permanently harmed by the rule “rests primarily on shifting, unexplained, and implausible estimates of its compliance costs — which are hardly impending in any event, as the relevant compliance deadline will not arrive until March 2025.”
In a brief one-sentence order, the justices turned down the request without any comment. There were no dissents noted from the court’s order.
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.
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