Biden judicial nominee helped free-market group that opposed administration on climate change

One of President Joe Biden’s nominees to a federal appeals court serves on the board of a free-market advocacy group that has opposed Biden’s own positions on climate change, consumer protection and labor rights.

Michael Delaney, who is up for a seat on the Boston-based First Circuit Court of Appeals, has for the past five years been a board member of the New England Legal Foundation. He’s served on a committee that vets amicus briefs advancing the group’s pro-business and deregulatory positions. In recent years, the group filed briefs supporting mandatory arbitration clauses, opposing the issuance of a New Hampshire clean-water regulation and challenging a California policy that gave union organizers the right to enter commercial farms.

Most notably, in a momentous case at the Supreme Court, the group supported coal companies and red states that successfully challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to combat climate change. The Biden administration’s position in that case amounted to a “vast and improper expansion” of the EPA’s authority, the group told the justices in a June 2021 brief.