Supreme Court Slaps Down Biden-Era Overreach
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered another big win Monday to President Donald Trump’s administration.
In American Gas Association v. Department of Energy, the high court vacated the District of Columbia district court’s decision upholding the Biden administration’s decision to enforce regulations on non-condensing appliances.
Lawyers representing the American Gas Association and other trade groups said the Biden administration’s rules improperly regulated the sale of commercial water heaters and furnaces.
The Department cannot issue standards that effectively bar products with different ‘performance characteristics,’ ” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in a brief to the high court
The Supreme Court of the United States said the district court in Washington should reconsider its decision backing the Biden administration’s pick
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.
Sauer said the Trump administration is seeking ways to eliminate rules from the Biden administration that are in dispute in the case
The case will return to the D. C. district court for further proceedings, and judges will probably come to a different conclusion now that the high court has ruled.
This Supreme Court decision is a critical repudiation of years of unchecked bureaucratic overreach by the Biden administration.
Biden officials tried to use environmental pretenses to tell Americans what they could buy for their own homes – from furnaces to water heaters to basic showerheads
This is the second blow to Biden’s liberal agenda.
The House of Representatives voted 226-197 on Wednesday to do away with Biden-era restrictions on household showerheads.
The vote is a bipartisan victory for Republicans who say they are protecting consumer choice from overbearing federal regulation
The bill, called the Saving Homeowners from Overregulation with Exceptional Rinsing Act, or SHOWER Act, was passed with 11 Democrats voting with the GOP majority.
“Washington bureaucrats have gone too far in telling Americans what they can and cannot do in their own homes,” said Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC), the bill’s sponsor.
This is about protecting consumer choice, fighting regulatory overreach and standing up for commonsense policy,” said Fry
The issue is a Biden-era reading of water-use standards that establish a total flow rate limit for multi-nozzle shower systems — reducing water pressure per head in homes with multiple fixtures.
Under a rule finalized by former President Biden, the Department of Energy requires the total flow from all nozzles in a single shower unit to stay below the federal cap of 2. 5 gallons per minute, a standard that had been largely the same since 1992.
Republicans said the rule was a prime example of a broader effort by Democratic administrations to regulate everyday life through the Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency
“Democrats seem like they want to tax you out of existence and overregulate you,” Rep. John McGuire (R-VA) said. “So this is a step in the right direction.
Less regulations . ”
The SHOWER Act would codify an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last April that restored an earlier definition that allowed each shower nozzle to be treated as its own “shower head” under federal law.
That directive from Trump effectively increased the water pressure available for multi head fixtures and gave consumers more flexibility in how they could set them up
“By codifying what different nozzles are classified as, the SHOWER Act provides a common sense fix that will allow households to choose what meets their needs, not what Washington mandates,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
