Blue State AGs Accuse Trump of Gutting Climate Rule

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration is trying to "gut critical climate protection rules through the back door," a group of 12 Democratic attorneys general claimed in a federal lawsuit.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency led by Scott Pruitt illegally used an interpretive guidance memo to thwart a greenhouse gas regulation, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement Wednesday. While a copy of the petition asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington to review the agency’s action was provided by her office, the filing couldn’t immediately be confirmed in court records.

The 2015 rule banning the use of refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons was put in place after they proved to be thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide, and a cause of global warming.

A three-judge panel at the appeals court rejected that measure in 2017. The court kicked the issue back to the EPA which, in April, issued the memo, to "dispel confusion and provide regulatory certainty" for those affected by the original rule and the court’s decision.

To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net;Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Paul Cox, Elizabeth Wollman

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