The US Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration could continue to a "social cost of carbon" calculation in regulating polluting industries.
A group of ten Republican states including Texas petitioned the Supreme Court to restrain the Biden administration from using the metric while their legal challenge was moving through the court system. The court denied that request in a one-line order, but did not rule of the legality of the metric itself.
A "social cost of carbon" calculation takes into account the effect of emissions on society, from increased deaths caused by heat waves to coastline lost to rising seas. When Biden came into office, he instructed federal agencies to consider the cost of carbon emissions at $51 per ton—far higher than had been set under the Trump administration—affecting everything from federal pollution standards to oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.
Republican states have challenged that decision as a "power grab designed to manipulate America’s entire federal regulatory apparatus," and in February a federal judge in Louisiana ruled the "social cost of carbon" calculation violated federal law, preventing the Biden administration from using it.
But that decision was put on hold by a federal appellate court in March, a decision that was confirmed by the Supreme Court on 26 May.