The Supreme Court has denied an effort by conservative states to review a Biden administration formula to determine the social costs associated with greenhouse gases.
The Supreme Court without explanation denied a writ of certiorari to review the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in October 2022 that 12-Republican-led states in Missouri v. Biden, which is different from the free speech case with the same name, lacked standing to challenge President Joe Biden’s executive order reestablishing the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases and ordering it to issue interim values on the social costs of greenhouse gases.
The working group, created during the Obama administration, was disbanded in the Trump administration. The Hill reported Wednesday the Trump administration slashed the cost to measure the social costs of greenhouses gases to about $1 per metric ton. But the Biden administration increased it to about $51 — using the Obama administration’s measure adjusted for inflation.
The state attorneys general argued in the lawsuit, filed in March 2021, that setting the social cost of greenhouse gases “is an inherently speculative, policy-laden, and indeterminate task.”
“Assigning such values is a quintessentially legislative action that falls within Congress’s exclusive authority under Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution,” the lawsuits states. “This quintessentially legislative 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.”
Besides Missouri, other states in the lawsuit include Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.
“We will continue to combat government overreach at every turn,” the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told The Hill. Bailey was not party to the filing of the lawsuit, which occurred under his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, now Missouri’s junior U.S. senator.
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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