The groups are suing Trump’s EPA over rescinding the rule supporting climate protection

WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of health and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, challenging the reversal of a scientific discovery that was the central basis of U.S. work to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

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The rule finalized by the EPA last week rescinded the government’s 2009 declaration known as a hazard finding that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. The Obama-era findings are the legal basis for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for cars, power plants and other sources of pollution that heat the planet.

Experts say the repeal eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks and could unleash a broader rollback of climate regulations related to stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities.

The legal challenge, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asserts that the EPA’s reversal of the threat findings is unlawful. The lawsuit says the 2009 results support commonsense safeguards to reduce climate pollution, including pollution from cars and trucks. The Biden administration’s clean vehicle standards were designed to “achieve the single largest reduction in U.S. carbon pollution in history, saving lives and saving Americans hard-earned money on gas,” the coalition said in filing the case.

Brian Link, a senior staff attorney at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said that after nearly two decades of scientific evidence supporting the 2009 findings, “the agency cannot credibly claim that the working group is incorrect now.”

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“This reckless and legally indefensible decision creates immediate uncertainty for businesses, ensures protracted legal battles and undermines the stability of federal climate regulations,” Link said.

The Trump administration claims that finding work has been “stifled.”

The case was brought by groups including the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, the Nurses Alliance for a Healthy Environment, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, along with environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Law Foundation, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club.

The lawsuit names the EPA and its administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.

President Donald Trump said in announcing the repeal that it was the “largest single action of deregulation in American history, by far,” while Zeldin called the discovery of the risk “the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach.”

Zeldin said the discovery of the risk “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that stifled entire sectors of the U.S. economy, including the U.S. auto industry.” “The Obama and Biden administrations have used it to carve out a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assault consumer choice and affordability.”

Environmental groups called the move the largest single attack in US history against federal authority to address climate change. They said the evidence supporting the risk finding has grown stronger in the 17 years since its approval.

Discovery of the risks spurred new climate regulations

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is legally required to limit emissions of any air pollutants that cause or contribute to “air pollution that could reasonably be expected to endanger the public health or welfare.”

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act and required EPA to determine, based on science, whether such pollution endangers human health and well-being. The EPA made this decision in 2009, setting new standards for vehicles. This result was built upon when issuing other standards.

Advocates said the EPA’s own analysis found that eliminating vehicle standards would increase gas prices and force Americans to spend more on fuel.

The EPA’s rescission of the hazard findings, along with the elimination of safeguards to limit vehicle emissions, “represents a complete dereliction of the agency’s mission to protect people’s health and its legal obligations under the Clean Air Act,” said Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is part of the lawsuit.

“This shameful and dangerous act…is rooted in lies, not facts, and is completely inconsistent with the public interest and the best available science,” Goldman said. She said greenhouse emissions and average global temperatures are rising – primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels – contributing to growing human and economic losses around the world.