Roberts Denies Mercury Stay

A state effort to suspend implementation fails.

Chief Justice Roberts turned down a request this morning to stay EPA’s mercury rule.  Until the past month, this would have been completely un-noteworthy, because such a stay would have been unprecedented.  But the Court’s startling recent stay of the EPA Clean Power Plan suggested that the door might have been wide open.  Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true.

In some ways, a stay in this case would be even more shocking than the earlier one.  Only the states, not industry, were seeking the stay.  Some industry members even argued that a stay would just disrupt their planning.  Moreover, as the government pointed out, the states were seeking review of a very narrow issue: whether the D.C. Circuit should have vacated the rule pending a remand to the agency.  Since the agency plans to act within the next six weeks, this issue would have become moot well before the Court could decide it.

Still, given the Court’s completely unexpected stay of the climate change regulations, it does come as a relief to see that the Court hasn’t completely lost any sense of restraint.

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Reader Comments

One Reply to “Roberts Denies Mercury Stay”

  1. Dan said,
    “….given the Court’s completely unexpected stay of the climate change regulations, it does come as a relief to see that the Court hasn’t completely lost any sense of restraint….”

    Dear Dan,
    There is a big difference between the mercury rule and the Clean Power Plan. The CPP is fraught with junk science, lies, bogus benefits, political propaganda and ugly corruption. The Supreme Court acted righteously to protect America from gross fraud and crime when it stayed the CPP. The CPP is garbage that should be rejected and discarded.

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About Dan

Dan Farber has written and taught on environmental and constitutional law as well as about contracts, jurisprudence and legislation. Currently at Berkeley Law, he has al…

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About Dan

Dan Farber has written and taught on environmental and constitutional law as well as about contracts, jurisprudence and legislation. Currently at Berkeley Law, he has al…

READ more

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