Missouri v. Biden

The federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri held that Missouri and 12 other states lacked standing for their claims challenging executive actions related to establishing a social cost of greenhouse gas emissions. The court also held that these claims were not ripe. The court found that due to the “inherently speculative nature” of their alleged harm, the plaintiff states failed to establish any of the three elements of standing: injury in fact, causation, or redressability. The court was not persuaded that the states were “entitled to special solicitude” that would excuse them from meeting these standing requirements, or that their inability to file comments on interim estimates for the social cost of greenhouse gases was a “procedural injury” that afforded them standing. With respect to ripeness, the court found that any impact of the executive actions could not be felt immediately and that the states would have “ample opportunity to bring legal challenges to particular regulations” that allegedly inflicted an imminent, concrete, and particularized injury. The states appealed the dismissal of the case.

Federal defendants filed a motion to dismiss in the lawsuit brought by Missouri and other states to challenge the Interim Values for the Social Cost of Carbon, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, which were released in response to a directive in President Biden’s Executive Order 13990, which the states also challenge. The defendants argued that the states did not have standing because any possibility of an injury caused by the challenged actions was speculative and any injury would be the result of “future, hypothetical agency actions,” not the actions challenged in this case. The defendants also contended the alleged injuries were not redressable. In addition, the defendants argued that the claims were not ripe, that the states lacked a cause of action, and that their claims were meritless. The defendants also responded to the states’ motion for a preliminary injunction, arguing that they had failed to show imminent, irreparable harm, that a preliminary injunction would disserve the public interest, and that any relief should be limited to declaring the Interim Values non-binding.

Missouri and 12 other states filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri seeking to block the Biden administration from using the social cost of greenhouse gases released in February 2021 by the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases. The Working Group was created by President Biden’s Executive Order 13990, which also directed the Working Group to issue an interim social cost of greenhouse gases for use by federal agencies in their rulemaking and other agency actions until final values are issued. The states argued they were likely to succeed on their separation of powers and Administrative Procedure Act claims. They also argued that use of the interim values for social cost of carbon would irreparably injure them, including by depriving them of the opportunity to participate in notice-and-comment rulemaking and by injuring their sovereign interests by compelling them to use the social cost of greenhouse gases in their implementation of cooperative-federalism programs.

Thirteen states filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Missouri asserting that the portion of President Biden’s Executive Order 13990 that prescribed steps for development and application of the social cost of carbon violated separation of powers, as did the interim values for the social cost of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide that the order directed the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases to develop. The states also asserted that the executive order and the interim values violated agency statutes such as the Clean Air Act that the states alleged conferred authorities on specific federal agencies that the executive order unlawfully arrogated to the Working Group. The states also alleged procedural and substantive violations of the Administrative Procedure Act by the Working Group.