A small, but significant victory: 9th Circuit Appellate Court voids City of Berkeley's ban on natural gas

burn baby, burn

The Ninth Circuit is possibly the most far-left of our federal courts so its ruling that federal law preempts local ordinances governing natural gas (local, and by extension, entire state’s bans, such as those in California and New York) could be important.

The unanimous decision was made by a three-judge panel, and though my days of federal practice are long gone by, I believe the losers here can move for a review “en banc” by all of the judges in the circuit, and if a review is granted, a larger mob of leftists might reverse.

And of course, Biden and his crew are attempting to achieve the same ban using EPA regulations — they could never get an actual law banning natural gas through Congress, so they’ll do it through a regulatory act by the non-elected bureaucracy — and a preemption argument would be moot.

But temporarily anyway, there’s now a precedent forbidding localities and states from creating a patchwork of conflicting laws governing natural gas, and that should put a stick in the spokes of the Green Vandals who are moving this agenda item across the country. At least until the 2024 elections — then we’ll see.