Nine states have just joined Robert E. Murray’s dead-end lawsuit against the EPA’s regulation of emissions from coal plants.
Filing a brief with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, the nine states — West Virginia, Wyoming, South Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alaska, Alabama, and Kentucky — argued that the EPA is not allowed to regulate carbon from existing coal plants, and is attempting to impose “double regulations” on coal plants everywhere. The states are seeking to join a lawsuit recently filed by Murray Energy Corp., the largest independently-owned coal company in the country, which is asking the court to put an immediate stop to the “disastrous” rule.
Regular readers here know all about Robert E. Murray and Murray Energy.
Murray Energy forced its employees to lose a day’s pay and appear in a campaign ad for Mitt Romney in 2012. After the election, CEO Robert E. Murray personally fired over 150 employees because of the “war on coal” and because “the takers outvoted the producers.” He essentially punished the same poor bastards he forced to appear in Romney’s campaign ad because Romney didn’t win.
Murray Energy rehired most of those employees in the following months because the so-called “war on coal” and “the takers” actually had nothing to do with their firing. That was just the excuse Robert E. Murray used to fire them. The company was not thrown into financial dire straits by the reelection of President Obama.
The Supreme Court has upheld the EPA’s authority twice in the past several months, most recently ruling that the EPA has the authority to regulate emissions that drift from one state to another which would seemingly implicate all coal plants.
Given the recent rulings, it’s hard for me to see Murray Energy’s lawsuit making it beyond a federal court.
The same coal miners who have been used as a political football by Murray Energy unwittingly showed up in a campaign ad for Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell (R) last month.
