SALT LAKE CITY – After a string of adverse court rulings on the state’s redistricting issue, Utah finally caught a break from a federal court in a lawsuit challenging federal agencies’ implementation of costly new energy efficiency standards for home construction.
The Mar. 9 ruling by the U.S. District Court in Tyler, TX is a victory for Utah in terms of both affordability and availability for future residential construction, according to Attorney General Derek Brown.
“This ruling is a victory for the Constitution and for every Utah family who dreams of owning a home,” Brown emphasizes.
In 2024, the U.S, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a rule requiring that new homes built with certain forms of federal financing comply with significantly stricter energy-efficiency codes, according to Texas court documents.
Under the Biden administration’s endorsement of congressional “Green New Deal” proposals, that rule would have applied to housing financed through programs such as federally insured mortgages, rural housing loans and various other federally assisted housing initiatives.
The mandate would have required builders to install stronger insulation, higher-efficiency windows, tighter building envelopes, upgraded heating/cooling systems and other costly requirements that would have increased construction costs and made affordable housing more difficult to build.
The lawsuit challenging those requirements was brought by a coalition of 15 states and the National Association of Home Builders.
The states’ attorneys general argued that the federal agencies illegally adopted updated energy efficiency standard developed by private environmental organizations, causing significant costs increases for new housing.
In court filings, the federal agencies acknowledged that their new rules would add up to $8,845 to the cost of each new homes for low-income families, would impact more than 175,000 new homes nationwide and reduce housing availability by roughly 1.5 percent.
In their lawsuit, the states’ attorneys countered with industry estimates that the new federal rules could raise construction costs by a much as $31,000 per home.
“Our system is based on a simple fundamental rule,” Brown explains. “That is, the power to make law belongs to those who answer to the people.
“Federal agencies must follow those laws too,” he adds. “They cannot automatically defer to private organizations and leave American families to bear the cost.”
The federal court in Texas upheld the states’ position, ruling that the federal agencies had already implemented a private industry standard under the Obama administration in 2015 and that new standards may be adopted only if they would not negatively impact the availability of affordable housing.
In the wake of that court victory, Brown pledges that his office will continue to defend Utah families against unlawful federal overreach and protect access to affordable housing.