Petition for Review – Clean Air Act

Listen to this article

Civil

7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges

Petition for Review – Clean Air Act

No. 14-3214 State of Indiana v. Environmental Protection Agency

EPA approval of State Implementation Plan not arbitrary and capricious.

“Relatedly, EPA claims that it rejected Indiana’s modeling of the Zion violation on scientific grounds. But EPA has not pointed to anything that is scientifically wrong with that analysis. Rather, the analysis was rejected because Indiana failed to take into account the effects of Illinois’s substitute emissions reductions, thereby rendering Indiana’s analysis irrelevant to the Section 110(l) inquiry that EPA has—as a matter of policy—deemed appropriate. With minor exceptions that are noted in EPA’s briefs (but not in its response to Indiana’s comment in the Final Rule), EPA does not challenge the science behind Indiana’s conclusion that, absent the change to Illinois’s I/M program, the Zion violation would not have occurred. So, EPA’s rejection of Indiana’s conclusions for non-scientific reasons does not merit special deference.9 Even without giving added deference to these determinations, however, we hold that EPA did not act arbitrarily and capriciously by approving Illinois’s SIP revision.”

Petition for Review Denied

Full Text

Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.