West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey is leading a 21-state coalition, urging the United States Supreme Court to reverse a D.C. Circuit decision that upheld sweeping Biden-era Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency standards poised to eliminate many natural gas appliances from the market and households.
The DOE's amended efficiency standards require natural gas furnaces and commercial water heaters to meet performance thresholds that only condensing appliances can satisfy, effectively banning non-condensing appliances from the market. The coalition’s amicus, filed in American Gas Association v. U.S. Department of Energy, argues the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) prohibits banning appliances with protected “performance characteristics.”
“This decision from the D.C. Circuit will hurt working families in West Virginia, seniors on fixed income and those in our rural communities more than any other, as they will be forced to either pay for costly home renovations or give up natural gas altogether,” Attorney General McCuskey said. “That is why it is so important for us to lead this coalition in asking the Supreme Court to step in and restore the rule of law.”
In West Virginia alone, more than 335,000 households — nearly four in ten — rely on natural gas for home heating. A large share of the state's housing stock was built before 1978 and is incompatible with condensing appliances, meaning many homeowners would face costly structural renovations simply to replace an aging furnace or water heater.
The brief argues the decision from D.C. Circuit Court failed to independently analyze the statute as federal courts are required to do. "Loper Bright was decided to prevent exactly this kind of outcome," the brief states. "When courts decline to 'second-guess' agency interpretations, they permit agencies to convert statutory ambiguity into sweeping regulatory power — power that falls hardest on the people least able to bear it."
Attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas joined the West Virginia-led brief.
Read the brief here.
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