Environmental Protection Agency Urges Supreme Court to Uphold Mercury Rules

The Biden administration wants the Supreme Court to ignore a request from states and Republican-majority industry groups to halt EPA regulations on mercury and air toxins from power plants.

In a response filed Friday, Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote that most of the country’s coal-fired power plants already meet the new EPA limits and that only two units in the country will require significant upgrades to comply.

She noted that the EPA is required by law to set the strictest possible limits for contaminants covered by the agency’s Mercury and Air Toxins Regulation, or MATS. These dangerous contaminants include neurotoxins and carcinogens.

“In adopting the rule at issue here,” Prelogar wrote, “EPA properly determined that it had the authority (if not the obligation) to revise the applicable standards even if emissions from coal-fired power plants did not currently pose a sufficient threat to public health to trigger a separate duty for EPA to take action.”