Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond suffered two court losses on Friday, both in cases involving energy-related issues.
First an Oklahoma County Judge approved a permanent injunction against the state’s Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, a defense Drummond took up in May when the same judge issue a temporary hold on the controversial act.
But Drummond’s participation in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of GOP attorneys general to block the EPA’s new pollution standards for power plants also ended in a loss as a federal appeals court unanimously denied the suit. The three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit instead agreed with the Environmental Protection Action that its new standards are required under the Clean Air Act.
Drummond was among 27 Republican state attorneys general that asked for a stay of the plan. But the appeals court turned them down, writing that “petitioners have not shown they are likely to succeed on [their] claims given the record in this case. Nor does this case implicate a major question under West Virginia v. EPA … because EPA has claimed only the power to ‘set emissions limits under Section 111 based on the application of measures that would reduce pollution by causing the regulated source to operate more cleanly[,]’ a type of conduct that falls well within EPA’s bailiwick.”
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