Sharp Turn For EPA

The Obama Administration has done a 180 degree turn from the Bush II administration, and has asked the US Supreme Court to dismiss a case Bush II had brought to the court:

The Solicitor General, in act likely to be hailed by environmental groups, moved to dismiss the EPA’s position in No. 08-512, EPA v. State of New Jersey. The petition had challenged a D.C. Circuit ruling regarding the EPA’s approach to regulating mercury emissions from power plants. 17 States, the City of Baltimore, 11 tribes, and several public health and environmental organizations opposed the Bush Administration’s position.

The original petition had protested that the EPA had discretion to delist source categories for regulation without making the specific health and environmental determinations required by the Act. But today’s submission indicated that the EPA had determined to follow the regulatory scheme favored by the states and mandated by the D.C. Circuit, which would hold power plants to stricter and less flexible emissions standards and hold the agency to a higher standard for changing source categories.

This motion to dismiss presents a fairly radical policy reversal for the EPA ...

(SCOTUSblog, emphasis added).