Bizarro World Arrives - Trump DOJ Intervenes On Elon's Behalf, So That Citizens CANNOT Sue Under The Clean Air Act

[hatrack]

EDIT

The Clean Air Act allows citizens and environmental groups to sue alleged polluters. Typically, the federal government or a state can move to intervene if it has plans to step in and take over enforcement of the case. The act itself only limits citizen suits once the government has “commenced and is diligently prosecuting a civil action.” But now, DOJ says it can intervene if it does not want to prosecute a case and prevent citizens from taking actions themselves. The department says the Clean Air Act gives the government a “right of dismissal” that “entitles the United States to dismiss the entire action” and that preventing the government from dismissing citizen suits would violate the Constitution.

EDIT

DOJ’s filing comes amid controversy over Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, and the way it has powered its data centers near the Tennessee-Mississippi border. The NAACP, Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center sued the company in April. The groups allege xAI has been running at least 59 polluting turbines at its gas plant without first obtaining permits or installing pollution controls required by the Clean Air Act. Such turbines can emit cancer-causing chemicals and ones that cause respiratory illnesses. The groups sued, in part, because Mississippi environmental regulators have told xAI the company does not need permits for turbines that operate for less than a year. DOJ says that means no one else can sue.

“The best interpretation of the Clean Air Act — which ensures the Executive Branch retains its primacy over the enforcement of federal law — is also necessary to avoid grave constitutional problems with the statute’s citizen-suit provisions,” the department told Chief Judge Debra Brown, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to the federal court in Mississippi that is handling the xAI case. DOJ said it also opposes the suit over national security concerns because the department relies on xAI’s Grok government model, which is powered by the data center at issue. XAI, for its part, also argued that “the Clean Air Act’s citizen-suit provision itself violates Article II of the U.S. Constitution because it vests federal law enforcement authority outside of the executive branch.” It argued in legal briefs that the case should be dismissed and noted that Mississippi regulators had confirmed the company did not require permits for “temporary” gas turbines.

EDIT

John Walke, federal clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he does not believe DOJ’s motion holds water. He wants the judge to reject it. Still, he noted, that “there are tens of thousands of industrial facilities in the United States regulated by the Clean Air Act.” “If the Trump Justice Department gets away with this maneuver, the administration can block citizen enforcement cases whenever they wanted to help a polluter, whenever they did not like the Clean Air Act rules,” he said.

EDIT

https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-doj-wants-to-sideline-citizens-in-pollution-fights/

[70sEraVet]

1. Clarification:

"...the administration can block citizen enforcement cases whenever they wanted to help a polluter"
Or, in the case of THIS 'administration', whenever the polluter makes a sizeable donation to the Trump Memorial I'm-Not-Going-ANYWHERE Fund.