April 4, 2023
Monday, Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined a coalition of attorneys general from 20 other states in opposing proposed standards for conventional cooking products created by President Biden Administration’s Department of Energy (DOE). The proposed rule would regulate the types of stoves and ovens Americans use to cook. Among other things, it would make over half of the gas stoves currently on the market illegal.
In a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the attorneys general noted that this new attempt “to micro-manage the lives of Americans” has little support. For example, DOE extensively and unlawfully uses purported social costs of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions to justify the proposed rule. The States pointed out that those numbers are the product not of data, but of arbitrary assumptions which, as here, can be set to justify any regulation. Further, DOE ignored the federalism implications of interfering with the States’ traditional authority to regulate consumer goods and the constitutional concerns of expanding DOE regulatory authority to even intrastate commerce.
General Reyes joined the Tennessee and Arizona attorneys general in this effort along attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.
Read the letter here.