Massachusetts Attorney General Petitions Court To Require EPA To Comply With Court Order

EPA Ignores Supreme Court Ruling on Regulating Greenhouse Gases

April 02, 2008 -- BOSTON – Today, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office along with Attorneys General from 17 states, the Corporation Counsel for the City of New York, the City Solicitor of Baltimore, and 13 environmental advocacy groups have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to respond to last year’s landmark ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA.

That ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court issued exactly one year ago today, required the EPA to make a decision on whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles under the federal Clean Air Act. A year later, the EPA has not issued a decision. Today’s court filing, known as a Petition for Mandamus, requests an order requiring the EPA to act within 60 days.

“Once again the EPA has forced our hand, which has resulted in our taking this extraordinary measure to fight the dangers of climate change,” said Attorney General Coakley. “As the EPA itself has acknowledged, last year’s Supreme Court ruling requires it to determine whether greenhouse gases are endangering public health or welfare, and if so to begin regulating them. The EPA’s failure to act in the face of these incontestable dangers is a shameful dereliction of duty.”

In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that – contrary to the agency’s claim – the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Court also declared that the agency could not refuse to exercise that authority based on the agency’s policy preferences. Instead, the EPA would have to decide, based on scientific information, whether it believed that greenhouse gas emissions were posing dangers to public health or welfare.

According to the petition, after last year’s ruling, the EPA publicly made clear its belief that greenhouse gases were in fact endangering public health or welfare. Once the EPA comes to that judgment, it must regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. On multiple occasions, the agency promised that it would respond to the Supreme Court’s opinion by issuing an endangerment determination and draft motor vehicle emission standards by the end of last year.

When it recently decided whether California could set its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, the EPA issued detailed findings about the widespread harms that greenhouse gases are causing. For example, the Administrator specifically found that “[s]evere heat waves are projected to intensify in magnitude and duration over portions of the U.S. where these events already occur, with likely increases in mortality and morbidity, especially among the elderly, young, and frail.” The EPA denied California’s request only on the grounds that the many severe harms that California faced would also afflict other states across the country.

The petition further asserts that the EPA has already prepared an endangerment determination. A Congressional investigation conducted by Congressman Henry Waxman confirmed that the EPA in fact sent its draft endangerment determination and proposed regulations to the Office of Management & Budget in December 2007. According to the petition, an investigation conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform established that consistent with its announced schedule, the EPA implemented its internal process of drafting an affirmative endangerment determination during the Fall of 2007.

The EPA has now declined to issue that proposed endangerment determination, and it last week said that it would delay responding to the Supreme Court’s opinion until after it conducts a lengthy public comment period later this year to examine policy issues raised by regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Joining Massachusetts in today’s Petition for Mandamus are: the states of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, the City of New York, and the Mayor and City Council for Baltimore, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Advocates, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Center for Technological Assessment, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. All of these parties were either petitioners in Massachusetts v. EPA, or joined amicus briefs in support of the petitioners.

This matter is being handled for Massachusetts by Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey, Chief of Attorney General Coakley’s Environmental Protection Division, who argued the case before the Supreme Court in November 2006, and Assistant Attorneys General William L. Pardee and Carol Iancu.

Source: Massachusetts Attorney General

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