Attorney General Moody Stands Up for Moms Against White Baseball Pants and Fights Biden’s Latest Radical Energy Policy Pushing Senseless Standards on Washing Machines

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—Attorney General Ashley Moody today led a 23-state coalition of attorneys general opposing the Biden administration’s latest overreach into the livelihoods of middle-class Americans. This time, the administration is weaseling its way into laundry rooms in an attempt to further its radical energy policies by implementing harmful and costly standards on washing machines. 

Attorney General Ashley Moody said, “The Biden administration remains adamant on continuing to push radical, stringent and costly energy policies directly into your household in hopes that no one will notice—this time, weaseling into our laundry rooms. As a mom and your Attorney General, I am proud to fight on behalf of moms against white baseball pants and push back to keep these senseless policies out of American households.”

The action comes in the wake of a newly released direct final rule regulating residential clothes washers that does not consider the economic impact on American consumers who will face appliance hikes due to the new regulations. The attorneys general, in a letter to the United States Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, asked the department to abandon the rule or, at a minimum, allow notice and comment rulemaking before enacting the standards.

As the attorneys general highlight, several appliance companies, as well as the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, had major concerns with the standards proposed by DOE. The coalition states, “AHAM’s comment stressed that the proposed rule would ‘eliminate consumer features, reduces choice, significantly increases cost, and/or negatively impacts product performance.’… Whirlpool, another one of AHAM’s members, wrote separately to further emphasize that the proposed rule was not economically justified.  Research conducted by Whirlpool showed a 25% increase cost for consumers and a potential 31% loss in industry net present value, which could result in more than 8,000 American job losses.”

AHAM, advocacy groups, and a select group of states, after reaching an impasse, did eventually consent to the new rule in a joint statement. However, as the attorneys general note, that statement “was the result of administrative arm-twisting and did not address issues raised by important stakeholders during the period for comments on the proposed rule… The joint statement also relies largely on the support of several advocacy groups, including the Alliance for Water Efficiency, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, the Natural Resource Defense Council, Earthjustice, and the National Consumer Law Center. These niche advocacy groups do not represent the interests of everyday consumers, and their input should not be given significant weight by DOE.”

Additionally, the attorneys general argue that by law DOE cannot issue this rule without agreement from across the ideological spectrum. By statute, this type of rule “must come from ‘interested persons that are fairly representative of the relevant points of view.’” Massachusetts and California may agree with the Biden administration, but many states do not. As the attorneys general note, “[a] handful of States favor DOE’s proposal, while a much larger group of States strongly oppose it. DOE cannot cherry pick the States with which it is politically aligned to circumvent the ordinary rulemaking process.”

The attorneys general call on DOE to allow the public a chance to comment on this regulation as it will “reach its way into homes”. Florida, and the coalition, urges DOE to seriously reevaluate its direct final rule in light of all this information.
 
The attorneys general from the following states joined Attorney General Moody in the letter: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia. 

Read the full letter here.

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