EPA can ignore job impacts

The Environmental Protection Agency is not required to estimate the number of mining job losses that may be caused by air pollution regulations, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

Despite the decision, the agency said that under President Trump it would consider the impact of its policies on jobs.

“President Trump’s EPA will take the economic and job impacts of its proposed regulations into account ... regardless of the outcome of this particular case,” EPA spokeswoman Amy Graham said in a statement.

Trump has repeatedly called for a resurgence of coal, which has been in a steep decline over the last several years. Last month, he removed the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, which seeks to deal globally with carbon emissions. He declared in a speech Thursday that his administration had “ended the war on coal.”

The ruling from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a West Virginia judge’s decision that sided with coal companies. Murray Energy and other companies argued the EPA should have to report on potential job losses caused by its policies. The EPA under Barack Obama’s administration had appealed that ruling.

Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray has been critical of Obama administration environmental policies, saying they led to major job losses in the coal industry because power plants moved away from burning coal to generate electricity.

A Murray Energy spokesman says the company plans to appeal.