[JURIST] Several US states, cities, and environmental groups led by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer [official website; press release] filed a lawsuit Thursday against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit [official website] claiming the EPA has violated the federal Clean Air Act [text] by failing to regulate carbon dioxide pollution from new power plants. The parties claim the EPA's failures exacerbate the problem of global warming. The suit comes in response to a 2005 DC Circuit ruling [PDF] in which the court held that under the Clean Air Act the EPA did not have to regulate automobile carbon dioxide emissions. It also follows a March 2006 ruling [PDF] by the same court that the EPA cannot exempt [JURIST report] coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other older industrial facilities from a requirement to install new pollution controls to keep up with emissions changes.

Parties to the present suit include the states of New York, California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin, the cities of Washington and New York, the Natural Resources Defense Council [advocacy website], the Sierra Club [advocacy website], and Environmental Defense [advocacy website]. AP has more.