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North Carolina ran into the same sort of trouble as Arizona in federal court last week. Both aim to enforce tough state laws meant to protect their borders but were overruled for trying to pre-empt federal authority.

Arizona is concerned about illegal immigrants crossing its border from Mexico. North Carolina is fighting air pollution generated by power plants in Tennessee and Alabama that blows across Tar Heel skies.

In both cases, the states may be prohibited from protecting their residents to the extent they think necessary.

North Carolina legislators had the Tennessee Valley Authority in mind when they passed the Clean Smokestacks Act in 2002. This set emissions limits on power generators that were stricter than federal regulations, as allowed by federal law.

The act also directed state agencies to “use all available resources and means, including ... litigation to make other states and entities, including the Tennessee Valley Authority,” achieve comparable reductions in harmful emissions.

Following those orders, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper filed suit against TVA in 2006, complaining its emissions failed to meet those standards and degraded air quality in North Carolina. This made TVA a “public nuisance,” the suit contended.

U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg, a North Carolinian, last year ruled in the state’s favor. But a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously overruled Thornburg last week.

(The three judges hail from Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, underscoring the fact that North Carolina remains under-represented on this court as nominees James Wynn and Albert Diaz are stalled during their U.S. Senate confirmation proceedings.)

The opinion finds several flaws in North Carolina’s case. The most critical is that TVA is operating within regulations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the states of Tennessee and Alabama, where the offending power plants are located.

North Carolina can’t apply its own state law beyond its border or upset “the nation’s carefully created system for accommodating the need for energy production and the need for clean air.”

“The real question in this case,” the court said, “is whether individual states will be allowed to supplant the cooperative federal-state framework that Congress through the EPA has refined over many years.”

Unfortunately, that leaves North Carolinians breathing air that is dirtier than their own laws would allow but acceptable under someone else’s rules. The court noted that North Carolina can ask EPA to lean harder on TVA and the states where it operates — but North Carolina has asked, to no avail yet.

The state has spent millions of dollars on this lawsuit, only to reach this disappointing defeat. An appeal will cost more. Like Arizona, North Carolina may have to wait for stronger enforcement by the federal government.