Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency
United States Supreme Court
573 U.S. ___ (2014)
After Massachusetts v. EPA held the Clean Air Act's broad definition of "air pollutant" included greenhouse gases, the EPA set 2009 greenhouse-gas emission standards for new motor vehicles and determined this automatically triggered the CAA's stationary-source permitting requirement — normally applicable once a facility emits 100 or 250 tons of a pollutant annually — for any facility emitting greenhouse gases. Recognizing that so many facilities emit far more than that statutory threshold in greenhouse gases that the permitting program would become unworkable, the EPA unilaterally substituted a new 100,000-ton threshold found nowhere in the statute, while also requiring facilities already subject to permitting for other pollutants ("anyway" sources) to separately monitor their greenhouse-gas emissions. The Utility Air Regulatory Group and others (plaintiffs) challenged the automatic-triggering determination, and the court of appeals upheld the EPA's position; the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether EPA regulations setting greenhouse-gas emission standards for new motor vehicles automatically trigger Clean Air Act permitting requirements for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases, and whether a federal agency's statutory interpretation is entitled to judicial deference if the agency rewrites clear statutory terms.