Supreme Court Stops the EPA from Rewriting the Clean Air Act
www.NFIB.com
For Immediate Release
Kelly Hoffman 202-314-2054 or [email protected]
Supreme Court Stops the EPA from Rewriting the Clean Air Act
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23, 2014 — Karen Harned, Executive Director of NFIB’s Small Business Legal Center, made the following statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. In this case the Supreme Court had to decide how far the EPA could go in regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA). NFIB was a plaintiff. From the beginning, NFIB argued that the EPA has manipulated the CAA.
“If this rule had been allowed to stand, small business owners such as ranchers, farmers, manufacturers, restaurant owners and others would have seen more paperwork, more oversight and fines. Allowing the EPA to use the CAA to regulate greenhouse gases would have led to negative long-term economic implications for small businesses such as costly mandates requiring operational cutbacks or the use of more expensive “green technologies.”
Energy costs have risen dramatically over the last few years with small businesses shouldering much of the cost burden. In fact, according to NFIB’s recent Small Business Problems & Priorities the cost of energy remains one of the top three concerns of small business owners. Furthermore, 35 percent of small businesses reported, in NFIB’s Energy Consumption Poll, that energy costs are one of their top expenses. The negative impact the CAA would have had on small-business owners would have been great, and the cost to the stability of our economy devastating.”
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The NFIB Small Business Legal Center is a 501(c)(3) organization created to protect the rights of America’s small business owners by providing advisory material on legal issues and by ensuring that the voice of small business is heard in the nation’s courts. The National Federation of Independent Business is the nation’s leading small business association, with offices in Washington, D.C. and all 50 state capitals
