New York Democrats just lost again.
A second federal judge has now struck down Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Climate Change Superfund Act, the Albany scheme that tried to shake down American and foreign energy companies for $75 billion over alleged “local effects” of climate change.
According to a Department of Justice press release issued Monday, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York granted the United States’ motion for summary judgment last week, declared the statute unconstitutional, and permanently enjoined the state from enforcing it.
Castel, a George W. Bush appointee, found that New York’s law is preempted on two independent grounds: the federal Clean Air Act and the foreign affairs doctrine. The court also held that the United States has standing to defend its sovereign authority over interstate emissions and foreign policy.
That is the second knockout in a month.
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier this month, Chief Judge Brenda K. Sannes, an Obama appointee in the Northern District of New York, already shredded the same statute, calling it an “unusual and sweeping” law that was “simply beyond the limits of state law.”
