Seeing 'Real World' Effects, Judges Suggest Vacating EPA Mining Guidance

摘要

Appellate judges appear to be suggesting that EPA's controversial guidance for permitting mountaintop mining operations - which EPA argues is not legally binding and therefore not judicially reviewable - still imposes "real world" effects on states and regulated parties, implying they will affirm a lower court's ruling vacating the guidance. "Do you really think in the real world the guidance doesn't mean much? That's certainly not what how the regulated [entity] thinks," Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said to the Justice Department's (DOJ) Matthew Littleton during oral arguments Feb. 10.