“With this action, EPA flips its mission on its head,” said Hana Vizcarra, an attorney with Earthjustice representing at least six of the groups named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “It abandons its core mandate to protect human health and the environment to boost polluting industries and attempts to rewrite the law in order to do so.”
A coalition of environmental organizations and public health groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to rescind its “endangerment finding,” an acknowledgment that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
According to The New York Times, the lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In it, attorneys argue that the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to rescind the endangerment finding was predicated on logic that was heard, and rejected, by the Supreme Court in the 2007 case Massachusetts v. E.P.A.
In the 2007 case, the Supreme Court ultimately found that the Environmental Protection Agency was required to issue a scientific determination on whether greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health under the Clean Air Act of 1970. If so, the justices said, the agency must act to regulate emissions. Two years later, in 2009, the EPA issued its endangerment finding, giving the government more ways to regulate greenhouse gases and curb climate change.
The Trump administration, for its part, claims that more recent court rulings have led to a reconsideration of the endangerment finding’s necessity. One ruling, for instance, suggests that Congress must weigh in on “major questions” with significant political or economic repercussions, including agency-specific rules. Another ruling, notes the New York Times, found that courts do not have to show unusual deference to the rules of individual federal agencies.
Brigit Hirsch, the EPA’s press secretary, said that the agency is committed to “following the law exactly as it was written and as Congress intended—not as others might wish it to be.”
Hirsch said that the EPA has since concluded that the Clean Air Act did not, and does not, provide the agency with the legal authority necessary to set and regulate vehicle emissions standards for greenhouse gases.
“In the absence of such authority,” she said, “the endangerment finding is not valid, and EPA cannot retain the regulations that resulted from it.”
Natural Resources Defense Council legal director Meredith Hankins, in contrast, said that the EPA’s “slapdash legal arguments should be laughed out of court.”
Sources
E.P.A. Faces First Lawsuit Over Its Killing of Major Climate Rule
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