During the Biden administration, the Mine Safety and Health Administration created a new rule aimed at cutting the levels of toxic silica dust mine workers can be exposed to. Silica dust is linked to an epidemic of deadly black lung disease as miners grind through rock on their way to increasingly thin seams of coal.
Mine safety advocates hailed the rule as a long-awaited victory and former Secretary of Labor Julie Su called it “unconscionable” that workers didn’t already have these protections in place to prevent the incurable black lung disease.
MSHA enforcement was set to begin in April. Mines could be met with stiff penalties and even forcibly shut down if they failed to comply.
The rule met legal challenges from industry groups who said MSHA was overstepping its legal authority. They pressed the courts to freeze the rule. Under President Donald Trump’s new administration, new MSHA officials did not object and even voluntarily delayed enforcement of the safety rule until August.
Meanwhile, orders from the White House in April came to expedite coal mining on federal lands and direct the heads of agencies to do away with any policies that transition the country away from coal production. It also exempted coal-fired power plants from stricter pollution regulations.
Without any resistance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit froze the rule earlier this month.
Shortly after the court’s decision, a group of lung doctors and mining unions asked the court for permission to step in and legally defend worker health measures.
Gary Ewart with the American Thoracic Society said the need to defend the rule became more apparent as layoffs took place at MSHA and he saw reports that mining groups friendly with Trump asked for it to be squashed.
“All those start to add up to, not an unambiguous signal, but worries that MSHA and the Department of Labor might not vigorously defend their own rule,” Ewart said.
But MSHA opposed the efforts of those groups to help defend the safety rules. On Wednesday, the appellate court sided with the federal agency and blocked the advocacy groups from intervening.
MSHA acknowledged a request to talk but would not comment on the ongoing litigation.
The mine worker unions say they’ll keep on finding ways to defend the rule and press for its full implementation.
“The court’s decision to exclude the voices of workers from this case is profoundly disheartening,” a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America and United Steel Workers wrote in a statement. “They are the ones whose lives are on the line, yet we are being shut out of a process that directly affects their health and their future.”
