The Trump administration will not have to defend the legality of a Biden-era climate rule this week following a Monday decision by a federal appeals court to dismiss the case.
The Department of Justice last Friday had asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to drop the Biden administration’s appeal of its loss to a coalition of Republican-led states, writing that the Federal Highway Administration under President Donald Trump “no longer wishes to pursue appellate review of the district court’s decision in this case.”
The red states had told the court Monday that they were fine with the request to drop the lawsuit.
“Whether this appeal had any merit is precisely the question that this Court would have decided,” three judges of the 6th Circuit wrote in a unanimous, unsigned order. “But be that as it may, if the states no longer wish to pursue their argument that the Federal Highway Administration lacked the authority to issue the challenged regulation, we will not compel them to do so.”
