A federal court this week ruled against the Biden administration's regulations on water and machines for washing dishes and clothes, the Washington Examiner reported, based on the "simple reason that purportedly 'energy efficient' appliances do not work."
The decision, according to the New Orleans-based court, was based partly on the ineffectiveness of "energy efficient" machines when compared to their non-green counterparts.
The case primarily concerns the regulation of clothes washers and dishwashers and the reversal of a Trump-era decision in 2018 to allow consumers a choice between machines that use less water but take longer, and those that use more water but take a shorter time to complete a task. The Biden administration removed that choice in favor of machines that use less water, which prompted multiple states to file lawsuits.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that the Department of Energy's rules "make Americans use more energy and more water for the simple reason that purportedly 'energy efficient' appliances do not work. So Americans who want clean dishes or clothes may use more energy and more water to preclean, reclean, or hand-wash their stuff before, after, or in lieu of using DOE-regulated appliances."
The ruling adds: "DOE does not appear to contest this data; in fact, DOE in 2020 appeared to agree that the frustratingly slow pace of modern dishwashers caused consumer substitution away from dishwashers and toward hand-washing. And nothing wastes water and energy like hand-washing: DOE itself estimated in 2011 that hand-washing consumes 350% more water and 140% more energy than machine-washing."
An attorney for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which helped convince the Trump administration to make their 2018 decision, old the Examiner: "In this opinion, the court has forced DOE to follow the law and even noted that one of the positions DOE took in this suit 'borders on frivolous.' This decision allows manufacturers to build better dishwashers, not be encumbered by counterproductive federal regulations."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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