South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has announced a significant legal victory for a coalition of 21 states challenging federal regulations. The U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota ruled in favor of the states, halting a federal agency from issuing further regulations and nullifying an existing rule deemed ideological rather than scientific.
Attorney General Wilson stated, “This is one of the many examples of woke bureaucrats making rules they didn’t have the authority to make, and with no accountability to the American people.” He emphasized that this decision restores adherence to the rule of law.
The contested regulation was crafted by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), established under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). NEPA mandates federal agencies to assess environmental impacts resulting from their actions. While CEQ’s role is to advise and recommend policies to the President, it had extended its function to setting binding regulations, which exceeded its authorized scope.
The court’s ruling highlighted this overreach, stating, “The plain text of the statute does not give CEQ authority to issue binding regulations.” U.S. District Judge Daniel M. Traynor remarked on longstanding assumptions about CEQ’s powers: “The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one. The truth is that for the past forty years all three branches of government operated under the erroneous assumption that CEQ had authority.”
Joining South Carolina in this legal challenge were Iowa and North Dakota at the forefront, along with Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
