A federal appeals court has ruled that a judge in West Virginia was wrong to order the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study of the impact of air pollution rules on mining jobs, overturning a previous court victory for West Virginia's largest coal producer.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said this morning that the type of suit brought by Murray Energy and a collection of affiliate companies was not authorized by Congress under the Clean Air Act, and thus the district court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case or order any action by the EPA.
EPA had appealed a ruling last year by U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in Wheeling that ordered the federal agency to complete a study both of the general jobs impact of air pollution rules and the specific effects of such regulations on the coal industry.
Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray has been one of the most outspoken of the many coal industry officials who criticized environmental policies of the Obama administration, and has blamed the mining industry's downturn on EPA rules.
While acknowledging that pollution rules play a role in coal's ongoing troubles, most energy market experts have said that stiff competition from low-priced natural gas has been a larger factor. And in Southern West Virginia - as opposed to the northern part of the state where Murray operates - the mining out of the best coal seams has also been cited as a central reason for the industry's decline.
In his earlier ruling, Bailey had cited a section of federal law that states EPA "shall conduct continuing evaluations of potential loss or shifts of employment which may result from the administration or enforcement" of the law, including "where appropriate, investigating threatened plant closures or reductions in employment allegedly resulting from such administration or enforcement."
But the 4th Circuit said that the law does not impose on EPA "a specific and discrete duty amendable" to legal review by the courts. Instead, the appeals court said, the law imposes on EPA "a broad, open-ended statutory mandate" and gives the agency wide discretion in how to evaluate the economic impact of its rules on a continuing basis.
"The agency gets to decide how to collect a broad set of employment impact data, how to judge and examine this extensive data, and how to manage these tasks on an ongoing basis," Judge Henry F. Floyd wrote for a three-judge panel. "A court is ill-equipped to supervise this continuous, complex process." Floyd was initially appointed to a federal district court in South Carolina by President George W. Bush, and then appointed to the 4th Circuit by President Barack Obama. The other two judges who heard the case, Albert Diaz and Stephanie Thacker, were both appointed by Obama.
A spokesman for Murray Energy said the company is reviewing the 4th Circuit ruling and intends to appeal.
EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.