President Joe Biden on his first day in office restored the climate cost estimate to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton.
The estimate would be used to shape future rules for oil and gas drilling, automobiles, and other industries.
Known as the social cost of carbon, the damage figure uses economic models to capture impacts from rising sea levels, recurring droughts and other consequences of climate change.
Economist Michael Greenstone, who helped establish the social cost of carbon while working in the Obama administration, said if the ruling stands, it would signal the U.S.
Republican attorneys general led by Louisiana’s Jeff Landry said the Biden administration’s revival of the higher estimate was illegal and exceeded its authority by basing the figure on global considerations.
A federal judge in Missouri last year had sided with the administration in a similar challenge from another group of Republican states.
Friday’s ruling by Cain, a Trump appointee, follows a ruling by another Louisiana judge last summer that struck down a separate Biden attempt to address greenhouse gas emissions by suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands and water.