The court had been expected to decide soon on whether the rule, called the Clean Power Plan, was legally sound under the Clean Air Act, but the Trump administration asked the judges to halt their deliberations so it could take another look at the regulation. | Getty Court delay hands Trump victory over Obama climate change rule

A federal appeals court granted President Donald Trump's request to halt a lawsuit over the Obama administration's most important climate change regulation on Friday, handing the him a major victory in his bid to revoke the rule that would have required power plants to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.

The decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sends the rule back to Trump's EPA to review and most likely quash the regulation that had been at the heart of former President Barack Obama's strategy to combat emissions of carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants.


Today's ruling comes just as Trump signed a new executive order to begin rolling back Obama's restrictions on offshore oil and gas drilling and just one day ahead major climate change protests planned for Washington and several other cities around the country.

The administration is also debating whether to remain in the Paris climate change agreement. Trump said in an interview published this morning that the pact is "not a fair situation" and that China, Russia and India aren't contributing enough money to help poorer countries cope with the effects of climate change.

The court had been expected to decide soon on whether the rule, called the Clean Power Plan, was legally sound under the Clean Air Act, but the Trump administration asked the judges to halt their deliberations so it could take another look at the regulation. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been one of the rule's most vociferous opponents, and as the attorney general of Oklahoma had helped spearhead the legal challenges seeking to overturn it.

The court's pause in the case means EPA will not have to contend with a potentially awkward opinion that could have upheld the regulation as Trump's EPA worked to dismantle it. Many legal observers believed after last year’s arguments that the rule would have survived most, if not all, of the legal challenges.

The landmark Obama rule sought to curb power plant carbon dioxide emissions 32 percent below their 2005 levels by 2030. The court paused the lawsuit against the rule for 60 days, and it asked for EPA to file status reports every 30 days. It also asked litigants to file motions on whether to remand the case back to the agency rather than hold it in abeyance.

Neither the White House nor EPA offered an immediate reaction to today's court ruling.

Pruitt's EPA now has the time it needs to review the rule and most likely propose repealing it. Trump specifically ordered EPA to do so in his executive order in March, saying he was ending the "war on coal," and that his policy would "create millions of good American jobs, also so many energy jobs, and really lead to unbelievable prosperity.”

Trump, who famously dismissed climate change as a hoax, has also repealed several Obama-era environmental directives aimed at reducing the federal government’s own carbon footprint, and it directed agencies to ferret out any additional policies that impeded U.S. energy production. The president also told federal regulators to stop using the “social cost of carbon,” which attempts to quantify the effects of climate change, in economic analyses of future rules.

Carrying out that repeal of regulation could take a year or more since the agency must go through the same sort of public notice-and-comment rulemaking it followed in creating the rule that was issued under former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in 2015. And EPA’s final decision could be challenged in court as well, meaning the agency would have to defend its legal rationale for repealing the rule.

It’s not entirely clear what will happen in the future, and observers say these are relatively uncharted legal waters. With today's ruling, the federal court is keeping a sweeping regulation on ice, potentially for years, while a new administration works to repeal it.

Some experts say it is possible that if EPA’s expected repeal is rejected by the courts in the future, the issue could simply push the court to rule on the legal merit of the challenges to the Clean Power Plan.

Also, repealing the Clean Power Plan and litigating that action could last through much of Trump’s term, keeping the issue in the political spotlight during the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Both Trump and Republicans in Congress have been working hard to erase a host of energy regulations issued in the final two years of Obama’s term.

The pause of the Clean Power Plan challenge makes it likely the court will grant a similar request for halting its sister regulation, which sets emission limits for future power plants. That rule’s legal challenge had been proceeding at a slower pace, and arguments that had been scheduled for April arguments were canceled at the new administration's request.

The administration has succeeded in getting the court to suspend other ongoing court cases over Obama-era rules, including the 2015 ozone standard, regulations limiting pollutants discharged in power plants' water streams and from smokestacks during startup, and a refrigerant rule. Plus, EPA is seeking similar pauses in several other lawsuits, including over truck emissions and the mercury rule.

CLARIFICATION: This story had been updated to clarify the decision was from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.