Mike Nasi, partner in our Austin office, joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey at a Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) event to discuss the Clean Power Plan rules in advance of their argument before the D.C. Circuit.

Paxton, Morrissey and Nasi, along with Ted Hadiz-Antich of the TPPF, pointed to the fact that the plan usurps state authority and that this interpretation of the Clean Air Act is a “power grab.”

(From L to R) Ted Hadzi-Antich of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Michael Nasi, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rob Henneke of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Law360 recently wrote Nasi called the setup “coercive federalism,” saying the EPA has already baked assumptions into the limitations that would favor generational changes like shutting down coal-fired power plants in favor of natural gas or other kinds of plants.

He said the EPA has “cloaked the illegality of this rule in the theory that states have flexibility.”

It has been settled law since the 1960s that regulation of an intrastate electrical grid is “explicitly a state function,” according to Nasi, and in any case, the authority to federally regulate power falls not to the EPA but to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The case is West Virginia et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al., case number 15-1363, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.