Responding to a lawsuit filed by an environmental group, a panel from the Fourth Circuit Court blocked the oil pipeline Joe Manchin demanded approval for to get his vote to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year, Politico writes.
The Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of the Wilderness Society which objected to a three-mile stretch of the planned 303-mile pipeline that runs through the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. The stay is likely to be overturned on appeal.
“This latest effort by the activist Fourth Circuit Court flies in the face of the law that was passed by a bipartisan Congress and signed by President Biden,” West Virginia Republican Senator Shelly Moore Capito said in a press release, apparently switching her fluid opinion of federal activist judges.