DevelopOhio

In a surprise decision, the United States Supreme Court voted 5-4 to temporarily freeze President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) “until after legal challenges are resolved,” Cleveland.com reports. While the high court’s four liberal justices said “they would have denied the request,” the five justices in favor of the decision “signaled that opponents made strong arguments against the rules.” Joanne Spaulding, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, said, “[t]he Supreme Court has already upheld the EPA’s authority to limit carbon pollution from power plants under the Clean Air Act (see our May 2, 2014 blog post),” and said the organization expects the CPP will ultimately be upheld by the courts. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has worked closely with West Virginia Attorney General in the legal challenge to the CPP, while both states also work to develop plans to comply with the policy (see our January 21, 2016 blog post). Implementation of the CPP “is considered essential to the United States meeting emissions-reduction targets in a global climate agreement” signed in Paris in January 2016. For more, read the full article.