WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal appeals courts on Friday rejected claims by Maine and 13 other states that the Bush administration’s decision to let older power plants spew more pollution into the air undermines public health in violation of the Clean Air Act.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided with the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the states failed to show how the administration’s new regulations violate the 1970 environmental law.

The Bush administration argued its decision to let power and other industrial plants modernize without making them install expensive new pollution controls will remove barriers to innovation and increase productivity. Environmental critics said it will also increase pollution.

The judges’ 73-page ruling said it is not clear if the administration’s changes in “new source review” regulations will lead to greater pollution, or if leaving the old rules in place would deter companies from modernizing.

Judge Stephen Williams wrote:

“This case illustrates some of the painful consequences of reliance on command-and-control regulation in a world where emission control is typically far more expensive, per unit of pollution, when accomplished by retrofitting old plants than by including state-of-the-art control technology in new ones.”

Other states in the lawsuit were California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.