In the Courts

摘要

"In the Courts" contains full summaries of court cases reported in ELR Update during the month of January 2021. They are listed under the following categories: Air, Natural Resources, Toxic Substances, and Wildlife. The summaries are then arranged alphabetically by case name within each category.American Lung Ass'n v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 19-1140, 51 ELR 20009 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 19, 2021). The D.C. Circuit vacated EPA's Affordable Clean Energy Rule that repealed and replaced the Clean Power Plan as a means of regulating power plants' greenhouse gas emissions. A group of public health petitioners sought review of the rule's conclusion that §7411 of the CAA only permitted emission reduction measures that could be implemented at and applied to the source, and other petitioners objected to the rule's determination that states could not count biomass co-firing as a method of complying with numerical emission limits. Industry petitioners raised an assortment of challenges to EPA's authority to regulate. The court found that EPA's promulgation of the present rule rested on a "fundamental misconstruction" of CAA §7411(d), and that the rule's amendments to slow the process for reducing emissions were arbitrary and capricious. It therefore vacated the rule and remanded to the Agency for further proceedings.