WASHINGTON, September 19 — A coalition of environmental and public health organizations sued the Trump administration on September 17 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s final rule revoking Biden-era limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fuel-burning power plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council leads the challenge alongside the American Lung Association, the Environmental Defense Fund, the American Public Health Association, the Clean Air Council and Clean Wisconsin.
The plaintiffs argue that under the Clean Air Act and standing Supreme Court precedent, the EPA has a strict legal obligation to curb planet-warming pollution from major industrial sources. Legal representatives for the groups stated that repealing the rules without providing a replacement amounts to a complete “abdication” of the agency’s duty.
What the rollback removes
The Biden-era standards had mandated existing coal plants and new natural gas plants to reduce up to 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions, relying heavily on technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The EPA, led by Administrator Lee Zeldin, said eliminating the regulations ends what it calls a “war on coal,” protects affordable energy production and will save approximately $310 billion over the next two decades. Environmental and health groups counter that the original rules were projected to prevent 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon emissions through 2047.
New analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund estimates that rolling back these protections could add up to 7.5 billion metric tons of climate pollution and cause up to 84,000 premature deaths by 2047 due to worsened air quality.
A recurring legal question
The lawsuit is the latest legal battle over the scope of the Clean Air Act and the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, an issue that has repeatedly reached the Supreme Court, including in Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 and West Virginia v. EPA in 2022.
The case will be heard by the D.C. Circuit, which has jurisdiction over challenges to federal agency rules. What to watch next is whether the D.C. Circuit grants expedited review and how the court weighs the EPA’s cost-savings justification against the plaintiffs’ argument that the agency cannot simply withdraw a rule without a replacement.
