Ever since the Trump administration came to power, it has been involved in a lot of legal tussle with the states as well as other stakeholders. In a new development, the state attorneys of 11 different states sued the Trump administration for the delay in finalizing the energy efficiency standards for gadgets like portable air conditioner, freezers and other such products. At the center of the lawsuits are the 5 goals which the Obama administration had drafted just before the end of his presidency. The new standards which are to be set would save consumers a lot of money as well as reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. In addition to that, there would be a significant saving of energy. The standards which were finalized were subject to a 45 day review time period. This was done to ensure that there are no typing errors as well as other inconsistencies within the standards. The problem arose when the US Department of Energy was not able to publish the standards within this particular time period. Due to this very reason, the new standards of energy efficiency were not legalized.
The other stakeholders like Natural Resources defense Council and Earth Justice have initiated a separate lawsuit in order to force the Department of Energy to publish those guidelines so that they can be legally binding.
The Trump administration believes that the standard guidelines which are drafted just before the end of the presidency of Mr. Obama would result in a lot of job losses due to the lesser demand of the products as well as the lesser energy consumption in nature. That is why it is against of those energy standards. In March, the Trump administration approached the US Court of Appeals in the Columbia District to postpone the standard energy efficiency guidelines which were adopted by the Obama administration. Since then, there has been hardly any new update with regards to the energy efficiency regulations which actually lead to the lapse of those 5 regulations which were drafted by the Obama administration as they were not published during the 45 day review period.
While the current lawsuits would definitely hold merit as multiple states have the Trump administration but it remains to be seen what would be the reaction of the Trump administration to the current lawsuits and how the courts would react to them.