In the News

“What this decision says is, in evaluating the environmental consequences of the lease, an agency has to look not just at the consequences of the impacts immediately surrounding the lease but also the consequences down the road of burning the fuel once it’s extracted,” said Richard L. Revesz, an expert on environmental law at New York University. “That’s enormously important.”

The agency has invented a new, unnatural way of evaluating regulatory cost that finds no support in the economics literature or in the regulatory practices of prior administrations of either political party.

Andrew Wheeler’s EPA may not be as dramatic as Scott Pruitt’s, but it still suffers the pathologies that make its work poor quality—and unlikely to hold up in court.

As climate threats mount and the window to act is beginning to close, states need to adopt desirable energy storage policies as quickly as possible.

An analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law shows that more than 90 percent of court challenges to major Trump deregulatory actions have been successful so far. In a typical administration, the government wins on such challenges around 70 percent of the time, said Richard Revesz, a law professor at N.Y.U. who specializes in environmental law. “This is truly aberrational,” he said.

Senators may ask Wheeler about his plans to ease carbon pollution regulations on coal plants. That and many other initiatives will face legal challenges, including plans to roll back auto fuel efficiency and air pollution standards. Richard Revesz at NYU Law doubts if any will survive.

Richard Revesz, a professor at NYU Law School and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, discusses how Democratic attorneys general, riding a blue wave into office, may do a U-turn on lawsuits brought by their Republican predecessors – many of which challenge tighter federal environmental regulations. He speaks with Bloomberg’s June Grasso.

According to a tally of lawsuits by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, as of Dec. 10 agencies had won just two out of 24 cases challenging their deregulation, a win rate of 8 percent.

A recent government report predicts dire consequences from climate change. That complicates efforts to weaken environmental laws.

Mr. Trump’s ambitious agenda has been slowed, however, by unusually high losses in the courts. Since summer 2017, the Trump administration has lost 20 of 22 court cases challenging its deregulatory actions, according to data compiled by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.