"In her first day on the court, Trump-appointed Judge Neomi Rao seemed to offer a thin defense of EPA's decision, in contrast to her new colleagues. "
"Two federal judges took President Donald Trump's administration to task on Friday over its decision to return to the market a group of banned refrigeration chemicals that are potent greenhouse gases.
The oral arguments over the Trump Environmental Protection Agency's policy on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, indicate that even as the Trump administration remakes the federal courts, it will continue to face judicial resistance to its broad view of its legal authority.
It was the first day on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for Judge Neomi Rao, the former law professor and regulatory critic who Trump named to replace Brett Kavanaugh when he was elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rao, who served for a year in the Trump White House in a post often nicknamed "regulatory czar"—head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—now sits on the leading federal court deciding the ground rules for federal regulatory agencies."
Marianne Lavelle reports for InsideClimate News May 3, 2019.
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