A federal appeals court on Tuesday announced it will hear oral arguments in one of the first cases challenging President Trump's energy agenda with a case focused on the environmental harm from mining coal on federal lands because of climate change.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in March in a lawsuit brought by environmentalists over the Interior Department's coal leasing program for public lands, which they say does not take into account the program's impact on climate change. The activists also challenged the program under the Obama administration.
The groups argue that the Interior Department "has never seriously accounted to itself or the public regarding the climate-change contributions of a program that singlehandedly accounts for 11 percent of total U.S. carbon emissions," according to a brief filed by the Western Organization of Resource Councils and Friends of the Earth.
The Trump Interior Department in responding to the groups' arguments said there is no significant agency action or failure to meet its obligation, suggesting that climate change does not meet the legal threshold for taking up the case.
A similar case leveled by Friends of the Earth during the Obama administration in 2015 was initially dismissed.
