Residential house construction is impacted by federal regulation. (Getty Images)
Nebraska, Utah, Texas and a dozen other states teamed up to fight the federal government’s energy efficiency standards that they say make affordable housing more expensive. The filing describes the standards as “radical.”
Filed Thursday in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas, the attorneys general are suing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, arguing that a section of the Cranston-Gonzalez Act — a 1990 law designed to help families afford down payments on their homes and keep housing affordable — is unconstitutional.
The complaint takes issue with the Act’s “Energy Efficiency Standards” section, which imposes regulations when constructing new public housing and single-family and multifamily residential housing. The standards often dictate the types of lighting, ventilation systems, roofs and heat pumps used in construction.
Calling that provision “well-meaning,” Outgoing Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and other attorneys general say the statute is “now being stretched to the breaking point to support a green agenda that Congress never enacted.”