WASHINGTON – US Supreme Court justices grappled with a Virginia law that bans mining at the nation’s largest known uranium deposit, weighing a challenge pressed by the owners of the property with help from the Trump administration.
Hearing arguments in Washington, the justices considered whether Virginia’s uranium-mining ban runs afoul of the US Atomic Energy Act, a 1954 law that gives federal regulators power over nuclear safety.
Virginia says the 1954 law didn’t affect the longstanding power of states to regulate mining of all types within their borders.