The challenge to the EPA was brought by a coalition of manufacturers and oil companies, including Boeing Co., BP America and Eli Lilly & Co.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can’t enforce rules inconsistently across the country, bypassing a region where it lost a lawsuit and putting companies in the rest of nation at a competitive disadvantage, an appeals court ruled.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today set aside an EPA directive to regional officials saying they should subject pollution permits for industrial facilities to a laxer standard in four states covered by a decision of the U.S. Appeals Court in Cincinnati. The existing, stricter regime continued to apply in the rest of the country.
The EPA’s action “creates a standard that gives facilities located in the Sixth Circuit a competitive advantage” and harms the interests of companies operating elsewhere, U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
The court’s decision rested on the agency’s internal rules requiring national consistency in enforcement, and the case didn’t require an analysis of its powers under the Clean Air Act, Edwards wrote. The EPA’s own framework trumped its latitude to tailor rules in a way that would prevent one circuit court from creating a standard for the whole country, he said.
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