In recent years, the federal government has altered the lives of Americans in small ways and big ways. The small ways include dishwashers that used to take an hour to cycle now take two hours, showerheads don’t put out the same amount of water that they put out ten years ago, and washing machines also take longer to wash the clothes. These changes are not the result of laws passed by Congress (which is where we are supposed to get out laws), they are the result of federal regulations. Well, the ability of federal agencies rather than Congress to pass laws is now being challenged in our courts.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, The Daily Caller<\/a> reported the following:<\/p>\n A federal appeals court shot down the Biden administration\u2019s efforts to repeal existing regulations on dishwashers and clothes washers on Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a legal battle between eleven red states and the federal government over the Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) efforts to impose energy and water efficiency standards for dishwashers and clothes washers that asserted it \u201cis unclear that DOE has statutory authority to regulate water use in dishwashers and clothes washers,\u201d according to the opinion\u2019s text. The Biden administration has attempted to push new standards for both appliances since coming into office in 2021 as part of a wider push to nudge the market toward more energy efficient appliances, which in some cases are generally\u00a0 less effective than their other models, the court asserted in its opinion.<\/strong><\/p>\n In March 2018, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)\u00a0proposed<\/a>\u00a0standards for dishwashers that allow the sale of models that run faster cycles, using more energy and water than standard dishwashers in the process. The Trump administration then\u00a0adopted<\/a>\u00a0similar guidelines as policy in 2020, but the Biden DOE\u00a0repealed<\/a>\u00a0those standards in 2021 before\u00a0advancing<\/a>\u00a0its own standards that crack down on the faster models advantaged by the Trump administration\u2019s rules in May 2023.<\/strong><\/p>\n The article concludes:<\/p>\n Beyond clothes washers and dishwashers, the Biden DOE has also sought to impose energy efficiency regulations for items like\u00a0water heaters<\/a>,\u00a0furnaces<\/a>\u00a0and pool pump\u00a0motors<\/a>. The administration has also spent\u00a0hundreds of millions<\/a>\u00a0of dollars on helping state and municipal governments pursue building codes<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn this opinion, the court has forced DOE to follow the law and even noted that one of the positions DOE took in this suit \u2018borders on frivolous.\u2019 This decision allows manufacturers to build better dishwashers, not be encumbered by counterproductive federal regulations,\u201d Devin Watkins, an attorney for CEI, said of the opinion.<\/strong><\/p>\n The DOE did not respond immediately to a request for comment.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent years, the federal government has altered the lives of Americans in small ways and big ways. The small ways include dishwashers that used to take an hour to cycle now take two hours, showerheads don’t put out the … Continue reading