[author: Bingham, Matt]
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a series of lawsuits challenging EPA's recently promulgated greenhouse gas (GHG) rules. You can read the full opinion here. The lawsuits were brought by a collection of states and industry groups arguing that EPA's Endangerment Finding, Tailpipe Rule, and Timing and Tailoring Rules are not supported by the Clean Air Act (CAA) and are otherwise arbitrary and capricious. In a per curiam opinion, the three judge panel unanimously rejected each of the petitioners' challenges, finding that the Endangerment Finding was appropriate under the CAA and that the subsequent GHG rules triggered by the Endangerment Finding are required by the CAA and the Supreme Court's opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA. The court didn't reach the merits of the petitioners' challenge to the Timing and Tailoring Rules because it found that none of the petitioners had standing to challenge them because they had not been injured in any way. The petitioners are expected to appeal the ruling.
There were approximately 17 states supporting the challenge, led by Virginia and Texas but also including Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah. A roughly equal number of states, let by Massachusetts, intervened in support of EPA's rules. Other states supporting EPA included California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
