Trump repeals EPA’s ability to regulate climate pollution, teeing up a legal battle with global stakes
The Trump administration delivered a deadly blow to longstanding US climate policy on Thursday, finalizing rules that revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate climate pollution.
First issued in 2009, the endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health under the Clean Air Act. It has underpinned the EPA’s authority to limit planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants and vehicles since the Obama administration and is considered the federal government’s most powerful tool to tackle climate pollution and the country’s contribution to the global crisis.
“We are officially terminating the so called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump said on Thursday, calling the policy “disastrous.”
In addition, the Trump administration will finalize a repeal of rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, since they stem from the finding. Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA sought to tighten those standards to prod the auto industry to make more fuel-efficient hybrids and electric vehicles — an effort the industry has since backtracked on.
The full text of EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding wasn’t made available before the Trump administration announced it, but the justification will likely rely far more on legal arguments that climate pollution cannot be regulated by the landmark Clean Air Act than an outright rejection of climate science, legal experts told CNN.
Legal precedent has granted the government regulatory powers over climate pollution. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that EPA had the authority to regulate climate pollution from greenhouse gases. And in 2022, the US Supreme Court upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, but narrowed the agency’s scope significantly, prompting the Biden administration to formulate rules aimed only at making individual power plants more efficient.
But the endangerment finding repeal will thrust that question back into the courts, where litigating the repeal could take years, and potentially go all the way to the nation’s highest court. A former top Biden EPA official told CNN he believes this move shows the Trump administration is playing a legal long game.
“Their definition of winning I believe has been and will be when they take final action and defend their action in the courts, to permanently remove EPA’s Clean Air Act authority to regulate greenhouse gases,” said Joe Goffman, who led EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under Biden.
If the Trump administration repeal is “upheld in court, no future EPA will be able to regulate (carbon dioxide) emissions,” said Jeff Holmstead, an energy attorney with the law firm Bracewell, and a former high-ranking EPA official in the George W. Bush administration. Congress could pass a new law that specifically directs the EPA to regulate climate pollution, but there is little bipartisan consensus on addressing the issue.
Climate and environmental groups are already promising legal challenges to the agency’s move.
“Earthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court,” said Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental legal group. “There is no way to reconcile EPA’s decision with the law, the science, and the reality of disasters that are hitting us harder every year.”
Attorneys for the Natural Resources Defense Fund recently emphasized that even with a conservative Supreme Court, the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions has been reaffirmed multiple times. NRDC attorneys suggested that EPA’s legal arguments are relatively novel, which could make the EPA’s move more vulnerable to being overturned in court.
“It’s not something that has been done before,” said Meredith Hankins, NRDC’s legal director for federal climate.
This story is breaking news and it will be updated.
