Politics

Environmental Groups Sue EPA Over Repeal of Key Climate Change Guardrails

A coalition of environmental organizations is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over last week’s repeal of key climate guardrails.

The case was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and names the EPA and its administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.

At issue: the EPA’s rollback of what’s known as the “endangerment finding.” That 2009 finding determined that climate pollution is a threat to public health and welfare, and has since served as the underpinning of the regulation of greenhouse gases, including placing limits on vehicle emissions.

“EPA’s repeal of these important protections is a stark and legally unjustified departure from decades of scientific consensus and legal precedent, raising serious concerns about the nation’s ability to address the pollution causing climate change and to safeguard public health and our environment,” said Howard Learner, CEO and executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC).

The center joined the suit against the EPA and Zeldin. Other members of the coalition include the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the American Lung Association.

President Donald Trump said in announcing the repeal that it was “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far,” while Zeldin called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.”

The endangerment finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry,” Zeldin said. “The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”

But environmental and health advocates counter that the repeal ignores scientific evidence and puts everyone in the U.S. at risk of serious impacts from climate change.

"The EPA has a duty to consider the well-being and safety of all, and the science is clear; climate change and air pollution threaten everyone’s health,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, chief executive officer of the American Public Health Association, which has also joined the lawsuit.

The effects of climate change are already being felt in the Midwest, Learner said.

In 2019, the Environmental Law & Policy Center published an assessment of current and projected climate impacts on the Great Lakes region, and released an updated assessment in 2025.

Among the findings: Temperatures in the Midwest are warming at an accelerated rate, there are fewer cold nights, precipitation is more extreme, and urban areas are facing extended periods of dangerous heat. 

These “real-world impacts of climate change are impossible to ignore,” Learner said. “By repealing the evidence-based endangerment finding … the Trump EPA is abandoning its core mission — protect public health and the environment for all Americans.”

The Supreme Court ruled, in a landmark 2007 case, that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Since the high court’s decision, in a case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding.

The current case is likely to end up back before the Supreme Court, which now is far more conservative than in 2007.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Patty Wetli: [email protected]

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