<\/p>\n
DENVER \u2013 The Colorado Supreme Court on Thursday denied a request by Gov. John Hickenlooper to weigh in on whether Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is within her authority to sue over federal carbon dioxide pollution standards.<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper, a Democrat, made the request in October after Coffman, a Republican, announced she would enter the state into a multi-state lawsuit seeking to block the new Environmental Protection Agency rule.<\/p>\n
The rule \u2013 part of the Obama administration\u2019s quest to slow climate change \u2013 calls for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 28 percent in Colorado and 32 percent nationally by 2030. The state is charged with developing a specific plan for Colorado.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s office said the multi-state lawsuit puts state offices in direct conflict with each other, while it also pointed to concerns with diminishing the governor\u2019s attorney-client relationship with the attorney general.<\/p>\n
In a news release, Coffman said, \u201cThe roles of the Governor and Attorney General are separate and distinct. The two executive officers must work independently to best serve all the citizens of Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper supports the federal carbon rule.<\/p>\n
Critics question whether the federal government has authority to \u201cusurp\u201d state control over power grids and emission standards, an argument that frames the crux of the multi-state lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The court \u2013 in a 5-2 ruling \u2013 denied Hickenlooper\u2019s request for a review, pointing to a 2003 ruling concerning jurisdiction. The court stated, \u201crelief shall be granted only when no other adequate remedy \u2026 is available.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Supreme Court has discretion regarding the cases it hears, two requirements must be met: establishing \u201can extraordinary matter of public importance\u201d and if \u201cno adequate \u2018conventional appellate remedies\u2019 exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Supreme Court left undecided whether the attorney general \u200bcan \u200blegally bring federal lawsuits on behalf of Colorado without the \u200bgovernor\u2019s authority,\u201d said Kathy Green, a Hickenlooper spokeswoman. \u201cThe court did not deny the importance of this issue nor did it uphold the legality of the attorney general\u2019s actions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coffman\u2019s power to sue in question<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[944,2097,488,13,481],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-air-pollution","tag-air-quality","tag-civil","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-gov-john-hickenlooper"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107854"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}