Court to hear legal challenge to Trump administration mandates for coal-fired power plants that increase electric bills and harm public health

This Friday, a key legal challenge to the Trump administration’s repeated “emergency” orders keeping Michigan’s Campbell coal plant online will finally be heard by a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — nearly a year after the plant was first forced to operate past its planned May 2025 retirement. 

The decision may have implications far beyond Campbell — a 60+ year-old coal plant whose continued operation is costing Midwesterners more than $600,000 a day and resulting in harmful air pollution that leads to premature deaths, asthma attacks and other health harms. The case could determine the fate of similar emergency orders for at least five other aging, expensive, and unreliable fossil plants the administration ordered to stay open, overriding years of state and utility planning that invested in cleaner, cheaper energy resources to replace the plant. 

What’s happening with the case? 

On May 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear a challenge brought by Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois, alongside EDF and eight other  public interest groups. 

The challenge targets the Department of Energy’s use of its “emergency powers” under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act — and is the first such challenge to these orders to be considered by a federal court of appeals. 

In their brief, the public interest groups argue that  

• DOE is misusing its emergency powers in the absence of any actual emergency to replace the judgment of the state, grid operator, and utility with its own preference that coal plants like Campbell remain open indefinitely.
• The State of Michigan, the grid operator MISO, and Consumers Energy carefully planned and accounted for the retirement of Campbell and therefore there was no need, in Summer 2025 or at any other point, to retain Campbell in service.
• DOE’s order ignored key constraints on its emergency powers, including requirements to demonstrate that the order is the “best” way to meet the emergency, to limit hours of operations to the minimum needed to address the emergency, and to minimize environmental impacts.  

Campbell and other coal plants are costing families hundreds of millions 

The latest financial filings (page 35) from Consumers Energy, Campbell’s owner, show that families and businesses will be on the hook for $180 million in losses as of March 31 for the administration’s orders keeping the plant open indefinitely. 

That pencils out to about $600K a day in unnecessary costs, which the utility is now seeking to pass onto ratepayers across the Midwest, including ratepayers in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. 

As Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel put it: “The whole point of closing this plant down was to save money.”  

And this does not count the heavy toll the plant continues to take on surrounding communities' health, including 400+ asthma attacks from the plant’s pollution and 10,000 lbs of toxic metals released into Lake Michigan every year.  

Other extended coal plants are also driving up costs: 

• The Centralia coal plant, Washington state’s last remaining coal plant, has cost ratepayers in the Northwest $20 million in just a few months, according to its financial filings (even though it did not generate electricity during its first supposed “emergency” period). 
• The two units of the Schafer coal plant in Indiana are estimated to cost ratepayers over $18 million during the first 90-day period of their extension.
• It’s estimated that keeping the Craig Unit 1 in Colorado open for the first 90 days will cost ratepayers at least $20 million and over $85 million if it’s kept online for a year. 

Families are paying more for plants that don’t even run — or don’t work 

Many of the extended coal plants have ended up failing or have not been needed to run at all, undermining the Department of Energy’s claim that they are “essential” to reliability. 

• In June 2025, Campbell partially failed during the very period DOE claimed it was critical. The Midwest grid had more than enough power during this period -- 10 times the power of Campbell, according to the grid operator’s data (page 3). 
• The Centralia coal plant in Washington wasn’t even called to run during its first emergency period. Demand was met largely by hydropower, according to Energy Information Administration data.
• Additionally, one Indiana unit has been down since July 2025 and one unit of the Craig plant in Colorado was down in January of this year. 

This pattern isn’t unusual. Coal plants break down more than any other type of electricity in the United States according to data from the North American Reliability Corporation — largely due to age-related wear that makes them harder to operate reliably. 

In summary, as I said in a recent statement: 
“It’s been nearly a year since the Trump administration began illegally keeping coal plants open past retirement – and all it’s done is drive up costs. Families are paying higher bills and breathing more toxic pollution from aging, unreliable coal plants that aren’t even running or working half the time.”