Federal court halts Biden admin’s corporate emissions disclosure rule

An appellate court paused the Biden administration’s corporate emissions disclosure rule on Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted Liberty Energy’s request for an administrative stay against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) corporate climate risk and emissions disclosure rule, according to a court filing. The regulation requires medium-sized and large public corporations to disclose climate change-related risks and data on the emissions created directly by their businesses in financial reports.

Liberty Energy, a company that specializes in fracking, asked the court to halt the policy’s implementation while its case works through the judicial system, according to Bloomberg. The judges who signed off on the stay did not specify why they decided to do so in the court order.

5th Circuit Stay by Nick Pope on Scribd

A coalition of Republican state attorneys general hit the SEC with their own legal challenge over the policy on March 6, just hours after the agency announced the final rule. The Sierra Club and Earthjustice are also suing the SEC for the disclosure, arguing that it is not aggressive enough.

The final version of the rule was not as ambitious as the SEC’s initial March 2022 proposal, which would have also required companies to track, calculate and disclose the emissions generated by the end use of their products and services, for example.

“Today’s ruling is a fantastic and expected win for consumers. This rule is the largest power grab in SEC history,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation after the Fifth Circuit granted the stay. “It’s illegitimate, mocks their statutory purpose, and hopefully will be fully annulled by the courts in coming days.”

Neither the SEC nor the White House responded immediately to requests for comment.

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