The 2021 executive order requires estimates of the societal cost of increased emissions when the government’s decisions affect the environment.

The estimates will the be used to figure a monetary value of the emissions changes caused by government actions.

According to NBC News, ten states led by Louisiana said the formulas inflated the estimated costs of oil and gas leasing, in addition to other projects. They first filed suit in a federal court in Louisiana, where U.S. District Court Judge James D. Cain, Jr. temporarily blocked the estimates from being used.

The government appealed that decisions, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a stay. The group of states then filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court to lift the stay and allow the District Court’s ruling to take effect.

Their application called Biden’s efforts “a power grab designed to manipulate America’s entire federal regulatory apparatus through speculative costs so that the administration can impose its preferred policy outcomes on every sector of the American economy.”

The Biden administration argued the states were acting prematurely by acting before the agency regulations were actually issued. The Supreme Court presumably agreed with that point of view, as it declined to take the case without comment.

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