New York State (WBEN) - New York State's tentative budget deal includes plans to omit natural gas in new homes and buildings up to 7 floors starting in 2025.
WBEN Legal Analyst, Attorney Paul Cambria, wouldn't be surprised to see a series of lawsuits come forth as a result.
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"National Fuel we haven't seen. I don't know, I was surprised. I thought they'd be more proactive. But clearly, people who sell and manufacture gas appliances, maybe even plumbers and people like that. I mean, there are a lot of people affected by this. So you would expect lawsuits to come from various areas of people who are affected by it."
New York State Senator George Borrello told WBEN that these plans are unconstitutional. Both Borrello and Cambria mention a federal case that happened just this April in California, overseen by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
"They found in that case, that the federal government had already preempted this area. In other words, the federal government has already, through a law that's been passed there, legislated concerning regulation of gas appliances. And they said that the city of Berkeley, for example, couldn't legislate. The area has already been covered by this federal statute. And so it'll be interesting to see if lawsuits are filed picking up on that decision, which was just this month," said Cambria.
"What the governor and the far left Democrats in one-party rule are making us do is sue them for this, you know, this 2025 date is not very far away," said Senator Borrello.
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Cambria said that the case was based on a federal statute of the Conservation of Policy Act, so it is not unlikely that a similar case will get filed in New York State and we could very well see a Supreme Court ruling on the case in California in the near future.
"I would expect a lawsuit will be filed at the district court level. And we're in the Second Circuit, we're not bound by the Ninth Circuit, but the reasoning and so on can be adopted. Somebody would file it in federal court at the district level and it would eventually make its way up. I would expect the case in California to go to the US Supreme Court soon. Because clearly, the city of Berkeley is going to appeal that. So I think we're going to have a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court as to whether or not the federal government has already legislated in the area of gas appliances, and that preempts the states and municipalities from doing that."
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