Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined a 10-state coalition suing the Biden Administration over a recent Executive Order in which the President established a “working group” of federal bureaucrats charged with calculating the “social costs” of certain emissions.

The end goal of the Administration is to enact new environmental regulations based upon these “social costs.”   

“The use of these values will result in the most expansive and expensive environmental regulatory initiative in history and affects virtually every federal agency,” said Attorney General Paxton. “These estimates will be used to fundamentally transform the entire regulatory structure of the federal government, as well as the way Texas conducts its business and Texans manage their lives.”

“This puffed-up Executive Order was not approved by Congress or the American people, and it flies in the face of the Founders’ vision of state sovereignty and the free market,” Paxton said. “This is a dangerous act of overreach led by President Biden’s unaccountable environmentalists.”   

Federal agencies were required to immediately begin applying these numbers in regulatory actions and “other” decision making.

This multistate lawsuit aims to prevent yet another act of executive overreach from the Biden Administration that will both eliminate thousands of jobs and impose serious regulatory burdens on Americans, including regulating and taxing use of generators, dishwashers, lawnmowers, firewood, and many more aspects of everyday life. 

Texas joins Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming in the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

“President Biden’s attempt to implement a ‘social cost of greenhouse gases’ value will result in government sticking their hands into virtually every aspect of our day-to-day lives. With this lawsuit, we are committed to fighting off such unconstitutional overreach,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said.