Oklahoma joins AGs in suing White House over climate change executive order

 

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter joined eleven other GOP attorneys general Monday in filing a lawsuit challenging President Biden’s first executive order aimed at climate change.

The 46-page lawsuit, led by Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri, claims Biden lacked any constitutional authority to implement new greenhouse gas rules. The suit says he violated the separation of powers clause in the Constitution, charging that Congress has the power to regulate, not the president.

Hunter and Schmitt were joined by GOP state attorneys general from Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

Their lawsuit challenges Biden’s Executive Order 13990 which directed federal agencies to calculate the “social cost” of greenhouse gas pollution by estimating “monetized damages” to inform future federal regulations.

Hunter and the others, in the lawsuit, said the policy has enormous consequences for America’s economy and people.

“In theory, the Biden Administration’s calculation of “social costs” would justify imposing trillions of dollars in regulatory costs on the American economy every year to offset these supposed costs,” they stated in the lawsuit.

They also said the president’s order would justify an enormous expansion of federal regulatory power to intrude into every aspect of Americans’ lives from their cars, to refrigerators and homes, grocery and electric bills.

“If the Executive Order stands, it will inflict hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of damage to the U.S. economy for decades to come. It will destroy jobs, stifle energy production, strangle America’s energy independence, suppress agriculture, deter innovation, and impoverish working families.”

The suit said the order also undermines the sovereignty of the States and “tears at the fabric of liberty.”