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Updated Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:37 am TWN, By James Vicini, REUTERS

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US top court upholds Clean Air Act

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration.

The justices unanimously overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that the lawsuit now involving six states can proceed in an effort to force the coal-burning plants to cut emissions of gases that contribute to climate change.

In a defeat for environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the clean air laws.

The ruling stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit claiming the five electric utilities have created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The lawsuit wanted a federal judge to order them to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.

Lawyers for the power companies, including an Obama administration attorney representing the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), said the scope of the lawsuit was unprecedented, involving national and international issues outside the power of federal judges.

The utilities — American Electric Power Co. Inc., Southern, Xcel Energy Inc. and Duke Energy Corp., along with TVA — account for about 10 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

The states of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont said their citizens have been harmed by global warming and wanted their lawsuit to proceed to trial.

“The Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency action the Act authorizes, we hold, displaces the claims the plaintiffs seek to pursue,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said for the court.

The ruling involved the most important climate change case to reach the Supreme Court since its landmark 2007 ruling that authorized the EPA to regulate greenhouse emissions.

Although the EPA has found that greenhouse pollution poses a health hazard, it has yet to impose regulations on the power plants in the face of opposition from Republicans in Congress.

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