CAJ Note: AG Lynch is running for Governor in the State of Rhode Island; AG Coakley is running for the late Senator Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts. AG Blumenthal is a favorite to win the seat vacated by the retiring Senator Christopher Dodd.
States win global warming suit against EPA
by John O’Brien
Legal News Line
Monday, April 2, 2007
BOSTON – Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is one of 12 attorneys general celebrating a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will require the Bush administration re-examine regulation of carbon dioxide emission from cars.
The Court ruled Monday in a 5-4 decision that the Bush administration’s policy on global warming presents a risk to states.
Twelve states, three cities and 13 environmental groups filed the suit in 2003 against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with Massachusetts being the lead plaintiff.
“Given EPA’s failure to dispute the existence of a causal connection between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, its refusal to regulate such emissions, at a minimum, contributes to Massachusetts’ injuries,” Justice Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, one of the attorneys general involved, called the decision landmark.
“They might be inconvenient truths for the Bush Administration, but the Clean Air Act is the law of the land, carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and the Environmental Protection Agency can’t continue to flout the law,” he said.
“On the most important environmental-protection case in at least a generation, the Supreme Court has delivered a ringing victory for everybody who genuinely cares about the fate of our nation and our planet.”…
…Chief Justice Roberts, in his dissent, said that dealing with the issues expressed in the suit should be the job of Congress…
The article continues at Legal News Line.
