Seyfarth Synopsis: The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) have published their 2025 increases to civil penalties.
We have blogged previously about the annual adjustments to the maximum civil penalty dollar amounts for OSHA and EPA violations. The agencies have now finalized the 2024 inflation adjustments, which increase the penalties.
Under the rule, the new maximum OSHA civil penalties for 2025 will be increased by 2.6%:
The new OSHA penalty amounts are applicable to OSHA citations issued after January 15, 2025, for violations occurring after July 15, 2024.
USEPA also updated their penalties based upon inflation numbers from 2024. Readers familiar with USEPA’s penalty structure know that environmental statutes typically set out a “per day” penalty, as well as a maximum statutory penalty. However, certain statutes allow for civil judicial enforcement that does not carry a maximum statutory penalty.
For 2025, USEPA updated penalties under all of the major environmental statues (including the Toxic Substances Control Act, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, Oil Pollution Control Act, Safe Drinking Water Act). As an example of the civil penalty increases for 2025, the chart below shows the increases under the major environmental statutes: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA):
EPA’s 2025 penalties are effective for violations that occurred after November 2, 2015, where the penalty was assessed on or after January 8, 2025. EPA’s 2024 penalties remain effective for violations that occurred after November 2, 2015, where the penalty was assessed on or after December 27, 2023 but before January 8, 2025.
DOL and EPA are required to continue to adjust maximum penalties for inflation by January 15 of each new year.
