Jay Duffy is an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force and was a principal brief-writer in West Virginia v. EPA representing public health and environmental organizations.
Analysts and pundits, myself included, have dissected the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA from all angles, and for most environmentalists it represents a frustrating defeat. On behalf of several organizations, the Clean Air Task Force filed the original case opposing the Trump administration’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in our favor but by that time, the Clean Power Plan’s strong emissions targets had already been met so the plan was not reinstated. West Virginia, along with 19 other states and several coal companies, appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. When the high court took up the case last year — against a defunct rule — I was sure environmentalists wouldn’t like the outcome.
For the majority of the justices, the Clean Power Plan represented a transformative expansion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s power over the electric sector that was not authorized by the Clean... Read more
