A federal appeals court handed a defeat to the Trump administration on Friday, ruling that the Energy Department overstepped its legal authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power plant to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright had claimed the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell Generating Plant was necessary to ensure reliable electricity across the region, deploying emergency powers to keep the facility active.
Environmental groups and three states, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, took the matter to court in an effort to overturn the orders keeping the plant online.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided in favor of the states and advocacy organizations, holding that no legitimate emergency existed under federal law.
The provision of the Federal Power Act permitting emergency directives “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop,” Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel.
By reversing the Campbell plant’s “long and carefully planned retirement … the results are disruptive,” Pillard observed, adding that there was “no ‘emergency’ within the meaning” of the governing statute.
The dispute in Michigan is among several legal challenges emerging across the nation as the Trump administration uses emergency powers to stop half a dozen coal-fired plants from closing.
open image in galleryThose orders, which also encompass facilities in Indiana, Colorado, Florida and Washington state, are inflating utility bills and producing avoidable air and water pollution, according to critics.
Meanwhile, an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania was also ordered to maintain turbine operations as a safeguard against potential power shortages within the mid-Atlantic grid.
Financial filings show that keeping the Michigan plant running beyond its May 2025 retirement date has accumulated approximately $259 million in costs thus far.
Opponents of the order state that households and businesses in the Midwest will likely cover those financial losses.
Ted Kelly, U.S. clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the ruling rejected the Trump administration’s national campaign to force “unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online.”
open image in galleryThe Energy Department’s “unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” Kelly stated Friday. He added that the Campbell plant and other aging locations are “incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health and break down frequently.”
Sanjay Narayan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, labeled the court’s decision a victory for Midwest families who are “paying to keep this old, expensive and dirty power plant online.”
The Trump administration “has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels at public expense. This reckless agenda will not succeed,” Narayan said. “We will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country.”
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.