W.Va. joins 20 state coalition challenging Biden's rule requiring net-zero highway emissions

Oct. 13—West Virginia has joined a 20-state coalition challenging a Biden administration rule requiring the states to reduce on-road carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the move a part of Biden's "woke climate agenda." He said the U.S. Congress has not given the Department of Transportation authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

West Virginia has joined Kentucky, Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming in challenging the climate change rule.

"This administration will try everything they can to step on Congress' toes and legislate from the White House to advance the president's woke climate agenda," Morrisey said in a prepared statement Thursday. "This radical far left agenda is hurting Americans. Biden is bent-over backwards in transforming federal agencies to be climate police to target the fossil fuel industry as part of a larger partisan strategy."

In the comments filed Thursday with the DOT, the 20-state coalition argued that the Federal Highway Administration overstepped its legal authority by proposing the measure.

"Given the Supreme Court recently made clear in West Virginia v. EPA that even the EPA cannot use its existing authority to take unprecedented and unauthorized actions to address climate change, such action is clearly beyond the authority Congress has given the Federal Highway Administration," the 20 states wrote.

Morrisey said the major questions doctrine was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in June when it decided West Virginia v. EPA.

The Supreme Court ruling in favor of West Virginia confirmed that Congress — not a federal administrative agency — has the power to decide major issues of the day, according to Morrisey.

Morrisey said the proposed highway climate change measure also violates the principles of federalism by requiring states to implement a federal regulatory program.

The 20 states further argued in their filing that the Supreme Court has said that "the Constitution protects us from our own best intentions: It divides power among sovereigns and among branches of government precisely so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in one location as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day."

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com

— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com. Follow him @BDTOwens