States, Advocacy Groups, Private Sector Petition Courts To Stop EPA Rules That Will Devastate Metals Industry

Monday, Dec. 21 was the last day that groups could file suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new ozone rule and MSCI partners at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) both submitted challenges to the regulation. 

As NAM Senior Vice President and General Counsel Linda Kelly pointed out, and as MSCI has explained here and here, “The EPA’s ozone regulation, which could be one of the most expensive in history, is unworkable and overly burdensome for manufacturers and America’s job creators. Manufacturers across the United States need regulations that provide balance and allow us to be globally competitive.” 

MSCI will work with the U.S. Chamber and NAM to support their lawsuits. 

Opposition to the EPA’s emissions rules for existing and new power plants also grew over the holidays. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, an independent advocate within the U.S. government for small businesses, wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy arguing that smaller firms don’t have enough information about the EPA’s regulations to know how they will affect them and that the EPA’s own analysis of how the rule will impact small businesses was “inadequate.” According to The Business Journals, “If the EPA ignores the Office of Advocacy’s conclusion that it’s failed to meet this requirement, business groups challenging the rule could use that as another argument to overturn it.” 

Also last month: ten additional groups filed suits with the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia opposing the EPA’s emissions rules for existing and new power plants. As The Hill explains, “The lawsuits are likely to be consolidated by the court into cases led by West Virginia and North Dakota” and “given the high stakes, the cases are likely to eventually reach the Supreme Court, which may decide whether the rules align with the Clean Air Act and the Constitution.”