May Courts Review Congressional Review Act Compliance by Agencies?
Author
Richard Lazarus - Harvard University
Harvard University
Current Issue
Issue
3
Richard Lazarus

A district court ruling in Idaho, Tugaw Ranches, L.L.C v. Department of the Interior, promises or threatens — depending on your perspective — to breathe new life into the Congressional Review Act. Under the CRA, lawmakers can invalidate federal agency actions within 60 legislative or session days of either the agency’s formal publication of its decision in the Federal Register or its provision of notice to Congress, whichever comes later. Importantly, the agency is then barred from later issuing the same or a “substantially similar” rule unless authorized by a subsequent law.

Until November 2016, environmental lawyers (or at least this one) paid no attention to the CRA. For good reason. That statute had only been triggered once in two decades, and not for an environmental rule. On the morning after the presidential election, however, environmental lawyers quickly appreciated that the 1996 law was back in business. Even more conservative Republican majorities would soon dominate both congressional chambers and the newly elected occupant of the White House would welcome, rather than reject, those congressional resolutions.

Fourteen significant Obama-era rules, mostly environmental, became quick victims of the new Congress and White House in 2017. While the green community then breathed a sigh of relief, two recent developments unsettled their assumption that the act’s 60-day clock had run. The first shoe dropped late last summer when Republicans in Congress began to argue that the CRA still applied to a host of federal agency actions taken during the Obama administration for which the agencies had never provided formal notice to Congress and had not been subject to Federal Register publication requirements. If true, CRA overrides are still timely years later.

The district court’s ruling in Tugaw Ranch is the second shoe. At issue in that case is the validity of decisions in 2015 by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to amend land use plans in 11 western states to provide greater protection to the Greater Sage Grouse, a once-listed endangered species. The plaintiff in the case, an Idaho ranch, claims the amended land use plans are unlawful under the CRA because the federal agencies never submitted those amended land use plans to Congress (such plans are not published in the Federal Register).

The federal government did not dispute that the plans were not submitted to Congress but instead defended on the ground that the case should be dismissed because Section 805 of the law precludes judicial review. The unqualified statutory language of Section 805, moreover, gives surprising force to the government’s view. It provides that “no determination, finding, action, or omission under this chapter shall be subject to judicial review.”

The Tugaw Ranch judge, however, was unpersuaded. He concluded that the omission in Section 805 of any specific reference to actions of an “agency” — there are references to Congress and the president — rendered ambiguous whether Congress intended to make judicially unenforceable statutory violations by federal agencies. And the judge then found unreasonable the federal government’s interpretation because it would mean “that essentially any rule or law can go into effect without [congressional] oversight or approval and there is no legal remedy available for an affected third party.”

If the Tugaw Ranch court’s view becomes controlling law, the CRA could quickly become a far more potent weapon for challenging the validity of a potentially massive number of federal agency actions that have, until now, been assumed invulnerable to judicial challenge. The land use plans at issue in this one case could prove the tip of the iceberg of litigation targets.

Federal regulators and the beneficiaries of their past regulations, however, should not be overly worried. The most likely result is that the Tugaw Ranch holding will prove short-lived. As harsh as no-judicial review provisions like Section 805 may seem, the judge’s discovery of ambiguity in the relevant language falls far short of convincing. And, notwithstanding his effort to suggest support for his view in other court rulings, there is essentially none.

Virtually all the courts have ruled the other way — that Section 805 precludes this kind of lawsuit — led by the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit’s 2009 ruling in Montanans for Multiple Use v. Barbouletosi. Nor are other courts likely to be persuaded by the Tugaw Ranch judge’s effort to discount Montanans because “the entirety of the D.C. Circuit’s analysis of § 805 is three sentences.” Certainly the author of that opinion, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, is unlikely to be persuaded. Of course, were a Justice Kavanaugh to conclude differently, all bets would be off.

May courts review Congressional Review Act compliance by agencies?

American Idols
Author
J.B. Ruhl - Vanderbilt University
Jim Salzman - UCLA and UC, Santa Barbara
Vanderbilt University
UCLA and UC, Santa Barbara
Current Issue
Issue
3
American Idols

Roger Federer, Pete Sampras, or Rod Laver? Cher, Madonna, or Beyonce? Chinatown, Star Wars, or Citizen Kane? There are plenty of Greatest of All Time lists for male tennis stars, female divas, and storied motion pictures. So why not for environmental law court cases? And which cases would qualify for entry? Chevron’s judicial deference doctrine will surely put it in the balloting mix for entry into environmental jurisprudence’s Cooperstown. And Massachusetts v. EPA is a cinch for Hall of Fame finalist, given the response to its holding that carbon dioxide can be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. So one might assume that this pair of cases should be eligible to be listed among history’s most consequential — but what about the others?

In 2001, when the Billboard Top Song was “Hanging By A Moment” by Lifehouse, Jim Salzman conducted a survey on the environmental law professor’s listserve (envlawprofs). He asked members to provide their 10 “Most Excellent” environmental law cases. It proved both fun and illuminating. A number of professors even used the results in subsequent scholarship.

The Top Three cases were two from the U.S. Supreme Court, TVA v. Hill (involving an Endangered Species Act “jeopardy” prohibition) and Chevron v. NRDC, and one from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ethyl Corp. v. EPA (requiring deference to agency risk assessments).

In 2009, when the Top Song was “Boom Boom Pow” by Black Eyed Peas, we repeated the survey, this time using a dedicated website and polling both the listserve and members of the ABA Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources. We enjoyed a high level of participation, with hundreds of responses from across the nation and practice groups, from academics and practitioners alike. The Top Three cases were Massachusetts v. EPA, Chevron, and Rapanos (on identifying “Waters of the United States”).

Time’s winged chariot has flown through another decade and we are excited to share the results from the most recent survey. Once again we have expanded the universe of those polled: the survey was distributed not only to envlawprofs and SEER but also to you and the other members of the Environmental Law Institute’s Associates Programs. The ELI list includes professionals who are not lawyers and is drawn from all sectors involved in environmental protection, broadening the constituencies who were polled.

We think you’ll find the latest results, showing a stability in the top cases, both surprising and instructive.

The online survey recorded information on field of practice, geographic location, age, length of practice, and sector (government, academia, law firm, corporation, NGO, etc.). We had 221 professionals who participated. The largest responses came from academia as a sector, pollution law as a specialty, and the mid-Atlantic as an area of residence. Based on suggestions from envlawprofs, we nominated 30 federal and state cases as eligible for the Hall of Fame. Participants were asked to identify the five “Most Significant” in the field overall. The next question asked them to identify three cases decided in the past 10 years that are the most significant.

The top table on p. 43 compares the overall rankings from 2001, 2009, and 2019. The bottom table shows the 2019 rankings of the newest cases across four different sectors. See the box on page 47 for more information on the cases cited in this article, all of which were decided at the Supreme Court unless noted.

A striking feature of the overall results for the American Idols of environmental jurisprudence is the stability in the rankings. There was no real shift of the most important cases since our last survey. Apart from a minor move up or down one slot, five of the top six cases were unchanged. If we look back to the 2001 survey, there is more variation but there are still four cases that have made Top 10 status in all three surveys across almost two decades: Chevron, TVA v. Hill, Sierra Club v. Morton (establishing standing for aesthetic injury) and Overton Park (agencies must provide a record for a decision). With an average vintage of 1976, these have to be recognized as the Four Tops. They are likely to have permanent positions in the environmental canon.

Of course, some cases have not been on the charts for all three surveys because they had yet to be decided, making the stability in the top rankings more amazing. Two cases decided after the 2001 survey, Massachusetts v. EPA and Rapanos, made Top 10 showings in the two polls since, suggesting they were not just flashes in the pan. Given its role in kick-starting the Clean Air Act’s prominence in climate policy, it is hard to imagine Massachusetts v. EPA falling out of the top 10 anytime soon. By contrast, we were surprised in 2009 that Rapanos was viewed as a Top 10 case so soon after being decided, and even more surprised it has retained its high standing. Perhaps the ongoing high-stakes battle over the Waters of the United States Rule has kept it in the public eye. Its importance could fade if the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act is resolved by statute or a rule with staying power. For now, however, both cases appear to have a lock on Top 10 status.

That puts six cases in what appear to be stable holds on Top 10 status. What about the remaining four slots? Four cases that made Top 10 for 2019 also made the same list in 2001 or 2009. American Trucking Associations (no cost consideration for setting health-based air standards), Penn Central (establishing a regulatory takings balancing test) and the Mono Lake decision (a California Supreme Court case affirming the state’s public trust doctrine) made the 2001 and 2019 lists, and Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (eliminating standing for “procedural injury”) made 2009 and 2019. The closest to a contender for this kind of staying power would be Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (establishing a takings analysis for total elimination of property value), which made the Top 10 in 2001 and took 11th in 2019.

The flip side to this story of canonical cases are the supernova decisions that flashed onto the scene in one survey but have fallen precipitously since. Three cases that made Top 10 in 2001 failed to make it in 2009 and were well behind the pack in 2019: Calvert Cliffs (National Environmental Policy Act requirements), a D.C. Circuit decision, fell to number 19 in 2019. Scenic Hudson (a conservation group may challenge a project) tumbled to number 24. And Ethyl Corp., another D.C. Circuit decision, is now number 30. Similarly, two cases from the 2009 Top 10 had faded considerably by 2019. These are SWANCC (whether isolated wetlands can be jurisdictional), number 18 in 2019, and Gwaltney (governing standing for ongoing violations), down to number 25. It seems unlikely we will be seeing any of these on the future lists. SWANCC, for example, has been eclipsed in importance by Rapanos. Scenic Hudson, while associated with opening the era of environmental litigation, has no lasting doctrinal impact compared to its contemporaries such as Overton Park, which continues to appear as a principal decision in many environmental law casebooks.

The lock that the 11 stable cases have on the top slots is further revealed by the lackluster performance of the new cases — those decided after the 2009 poll. In the current survey, no cases decided in the past decade came close to the Top Five, or even made the Top 10. A slug of four new cases got within striking distance: Michigan v. EPA (cost factors should be included in determinations of “appropriate and necessary”) is number 12. American Electric Power v. Connecticut (on Clean Air Act displacement of federal common law) is 13. Burlington Northern (on Superfund “arranger” liability) is 14. And UARG v. EPA (on the agency’s Tailoring Rule) is 16. Interestingly, Burlington Northern, which was well ahead of Sackett v. EPA (on reviewability of compliance orders) on the 2019 full survey was eclipsed by Sackett in the new cases category, and also by EPA v. EME Homer (governing the Clean Air Act Good Neighbor Rule). One explanation may be that some respondents saw Burlington Northern as more important up to the present, but saw Sackett and EME Homer as rising in importance going forward.

The low rankings for new cases marks a dramatic change from the past. The 2001 survey contained two then-recent cases, American Trucking and Lucas. The 2009 survey saw even more change from new cases. Massachusetts v. EPA vaulted to number 1, Rapanos was number 2, and SWANCC, which has fallen off the 2019 list entirely, was then number 6. In 2019, though, not a single recent case made the Top 10 list. That is an important trend indicator.

Virtually across the board of all demographic categories, three cases appear as everyone’s Top Three — Massachusetts v. EPA and Chevron in a virtual tie, then Rapanos, with less than half the number of votes, a distant third. Senior attorneys threw a disproportionate number of votes at Penn Central, TVA, and Mono Lake — perhaps suggesting they may face some slide in status as the profession ages — whereas Lujan is the opposite, with much more support from younger lawyers.

In looking at recent cases, there was considerable consistency over the Top Five except for Sackett and Hawkes (Corps of Engineers jurisdiction determination is reviewable). Private practice, government, and NGO attorneys ranked Sackett as an important recent case. Academics, though, didn’t include the decision at all in the Top Five of new cases. Clearly, academics are missing something about Sackett that is resonating within other practice settings — possibly it is having more practical than doctrinal impact. Conversely, EME Homer made the Top Five lists for NGO and academics but not for private practice and government professionals, suggesting this case may have more doctrinal than practical impact.

Respondents from any practice setting who chose Rapanos as one of their Top Five cases on the full survey overwhelmingly went with Sackett as the most important new case and ranked Hawkes and Koontz (applying exactions analysis to permit denial) high as well, suggesting that the wetlands practice field has had a considerable impact on the whole. Geography had even less to say about differences in opinions. Not surprisingly, Mono Lake made the Top 10 largely on votes from Californians. That state also boosted Rapanos, as did the mid-Atlantic. Beyond that, the only differences across practice groups and geography were relatively minor, and no other strong cross-correlations between cases were evident.

Almost 50 years after the birth of modern environmental law, 11 judicial opinions have secure claims to being within the canon of environmental law: Chevron, Massachusetts v. EPA, Rapanos, TVA v. Hill, Overton Park, Lujan, American Trucking, Sierra Club v. Morton, Penn Central, Mono Lake, and Lucas. But are any of the six that led the new cases survey — Michigan v. EPA, UARG v. EPA, AEP v. Connecticut, Sackett, EPA v. EME Homer, and Burlington Northern — destined for greatness in 2029?

We doubt it. AEP v. Connecticut may have a chance, if public nuisance climate change claims gain more traction in the lower courts and the precedent is used to stymie them. The others, however, involved narrow questions of statutory interpretation or administrative law with a fairly limited footprint. To be sure, Burlington Northern’s effect on CERCLA liability has significant impacts for industry, and Sackett opens up to judicial review some agency actions not previously believed to be final. But a Massachusetts v. EPA or an Overton Park they are not.

What does the 2019 survey say more generally about the state of environmental law? This is now a mature field. It may well be that there are no more canonical issues to be decided because the big questions have been resolved. It’s just Chevron statutory interpretations on ever-finer details, with really big-impact statutory interpretations few and far between. There may be an occasional case as impactful as Massachusetts v. EPA’s opening the Clean Air Act to regulating greenhouse gases or a Rapanos determining the reach of the Clean Water Act. But those are increasingly fewer and farther between. Looking ahead to the 2029 survey, perhaps we should expect the next decade’s cases to be of only marginal importance as well.

Of course, there is always the unexpected. Juliana v. United States, in which youthful plaintiffs hope to assert at trial in district court that the federal government has failed in its duty to protect them from climate change while supporting the polluters who are causing the problem, may defy expectations and ultimately find for the plaintiffs; however, only a few respondents submitted it as a write-in. The replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy with Justice Brett Kavanaugh could provide the fifth vote for some dramatic decisions. The Supreme Court’s new composition seems primed to reconsider Chevron, or to bolster AEP v. Connecticut. Even so, for a new case to wedge its way into the Top 10 will mean knocking out one of the old guard. That’s going to take more than any of the new cases in our 2019 survey could muster. It’s going to have to be among the Greatest of All Time. TEF

For the data underlying this article and for a complete list of the nominees go to http://tinyurl.com/y4ljzph9

The court cases listed here in chronological order are discusssed in the main article. They are among those selected by a group of experts as nominees for a hall of fame celebrating their impact on U.S. environmental law. The authors then surveyed groups of professionals for their votes for the jurisprudential Greatest of All Time — see tables on page 43 for summary results. All decisions below are by the U.S. Supreme Court unless noted.

Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co. (1907)

Early common law nuisance case brought by state against copper smelter for its air pollution.

Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe (1971)

Required agencies to provide record justifying that decisions were not arbitrary and capricious.

Calvert Cliffs’ Coordinating Committee, Inc. v. United States Atomic Energy Commission (1971)

D. C. Circuit National Environmenal Policy Act case requiring that agencies must consider impact statements to the fullest extent possible.

Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission (1972)

Landmark Second Circuit decision allowing conservation group to sue to challenge power plant in Hudson Valley.

Sierra Club v. Morton (1972)

Aesthetic injury can satisfy standing’s “injury-in-fact” requirement.

Ethyl Corp. v. EPA (1976)

D.C. Ciruit case granting substantial deference to EPA’s assessment of risk in the face of uncertainty.

Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City (1978)

Historic preservation challenge creates test for regulatory takings analysis.

Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill (1978)

ESA halts completion of a TVA dam that will destroy a listed species’ habitat.

National Audubon Society v. Superior Court of Alpine County (Mono Lake decision) (1983)

California Supreme Court decision that governments must take the public trust doctrine into account in the planning and allocation of water resources.

Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984)

Agency interpretations of statutory authorities are entitled to judicial deference unless they fail a two-step test for plain meaning and rational basis.

Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. V. Chesapeake Bay Foundation (1987)

Clean Water Act citizen suit provision allows suit for injunctive relief only with respect to an ongoing violation.

Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992)

Regulation of land use eliminating all economic value of a parcel is a taking unless background principles of common law would have prohibited the same land use.

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992)

Standing cannot be based on “procedural injury” where no separate concrete interest is impaired.

Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (2000)

Even without an ongoing violation, standing exists to seek civil penalties if violations are likely to recur.

Whitman v. American Trucking Associations (2001)

The Clean Air Act prohibits use of cost-benefit analysis in setting harm-based National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2001)

Jurisdiction under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act does not extend to isolated wetlands.

Rapanos v. United States (2006)

Convoluted 4-1-4 decision addressing jurisdiction under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act over wetland areas connected intermittently to navigable waters by non-navigable tributaries.

Massachusetts v. EPA (2007)

Greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles are a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and EPA must decide whether and how to regulate them.

Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway v. United States (2009)

Companies are not liable as “arrangers” under Superfund for spills that occur as a peripheral result of the legitimate sale of an unused, useful product.

American Electric Power v. Connecticut (2011)

The Clean Air Act and EPA’s implementation actions displace any federal common-law right to seek abatement of carbon emissions from power plants.

Sackett v. EPA (2012)

An EPA administrative compliance order under Section 309 of the Clean Water Act alleging fill of wetlands in violation of Section 404 and requiring remedial actions is a final agency action judicially reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act.

EPA v. EME Homer (2014)

EPA’s cost-effective allocation of emission reductions among upwind states is a permissible interpretation of the Clean Air Act’s “Good Neighbor Provision.”

Michigan v. EPA (2015)

EPA must consider cost under provision of Clean Air Act authorizing “appropriate and necessary” regulation of power plant emissions.

Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA (2014)

EPA overstepped its Clean Air Act authority in the way it designed the Tailoring Rule governing thresholds for regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions, but the agency may regulate large sources of greenhouse emissions if they are already being regulated for emitting conventional pollutants.>

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes (2016)

A Corps jurisdictional determination defining the presence or absence of Waters of the United States on a property is a final agency action judicially reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act.

COVER STORY ❧ Which are the stars, the most important cases in U.S. environmental jurisprudence? We asked that question in a survey of this magazine’s readers and other professionals across all sectors. The results and those from our poll 10 years ago show remarkable durability over time, truly placing these selections in the legal Hall of Fame.

ELI 50th Anniversary: Building on the past to secure the future, after half a century of leadership on law, policy, and management
Author
Anna Beeman - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
Issue
2

ELI 50th Anniversary Building on the past to secure the future, after half a century of leadership on law, policy, and management

In September 1969, 50 lawyers, practitioners, and academics from across the country convened at Airlie House, just outside Warrenton, Virginia. This watershed event led directly to the establishment of the Environmental Law Institute and the Environmental Law Reporter to collect and analyze developments in the newly created field.

ELI was incorporated on December 22, 1969, as a §501(c)(3) organization, the same day that Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act. The fledgling Institute held its first educational program in late 1970 and released the first issue of ELR the following year.

Half a century later, ELI has grown into the leading environmental law think tank, offering an objective and nonpartisan perspective through its top-tier research, educational programs, and publications.

Throughout this anniversary year, ELI will look back at its history and the sharing of environmental progress with its valued community members and diverse array of supporters. The Institute is hosting special programming and events throughout the year. Each month will focus on a key issue within ELI’s work portfolio over the last five decades. This programming began in January with programs on pollution, a focal point of ELI’s work through the years, and will end in December with a focus on environmental assessment, which occurs the same month ELI and NEPA were formed in 1969.

In keeping with its January theme, programming that month featured pollution prevention and re-thinking waste. To reduce islands of plastic waste in oceans and polluted air in cities, ELI explored ways for stakeholders to consider alternatives to the traditional linear model of resource use.

The Institute hosted a panel discussion and webinar highlighting different ways to transform the traditional “take, make, and dispose” economic model into a circular economy, even when lower costs of production processes and materials have been an obstacle to such a transformation. Moderated by Michael Goo of AJW and the Circular Economy Industries Association, panelists discussed the many obstacles and benefits of fostering a production system that recoups its waste as feedstock, and whether emerging new technologies and business models can be viable in such a resource format.

In addition to moderator Goo, expert panelists included Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law; Paul Hagen, principal at Beveridge & Diamond PC; Stewart Leeth, vice president of regulatory affairs and chief sustainability officer of Smithfield Foods; and Meagan Weiland, an independent researcher at Economic & Human Dimensions Research Associates and program coordinator for Science magazine.

An additional webinar in January focused on the new and innovative methods of recycling undesired material. Moderated by ELI Senior Attorney James McElfish, director of the Sustainable Land Use Program, the panel discussed ways to encourage cities, wastewater treatment plants, corporations, and other important players to improve recycling processes, especially as the number of different types of recyclable materials increases. Interestingly, this issue also creates new business opportunities for the industrial and commercial sector to explore.

ELI’s anniversary celebration will continue throughout the year. Special programming in March will focus on re-imagining environmental governance, and April will feature the role of law in climate response and energy transformation.

In the latter half of the year, stay tuned as ELI looks forward to featuring topics including wetlands protection, technology as an emerging driver for environmental behaviors and conditions, and gender and the environment.

 

Institute launches podcast series to reach out to constituencies

In January, ELI launched its new People Places Planet Podcast. The series will provide a platform for Institute staff and leadership to discuss their work covering a range of environmental topics, as well as emerging developments in environmental law both domestically and internationally.

The podcast enables ELI to remain a thought-leader of environmental law and governance in the 21st century. It is a means to communicate the Institute’s cutting-edge, and thought-provoking, insights in a new medium to our growing international audience.

The inaugural episode hosts a discussion between ELI President Scott Fulton and Director of the Technology, Innovation, and the Environment Project David Rejeski on their co-written ELR Comment, “A New Environmentalism: The Need for a Total Strategy for Environmental Protection,” which was featured in the September ELR.

Fulton and Rejeski guide listeners through their theoretical framework, discuss why they focused on this topic at this time, and consider how their framework could be applied to environmental policymaking.

Rejeski remarks that despite the cluster of progress in environmental protection during the late 20th century, moving the agenda forward now requires asking questions about the four emerging drivers of the environmental protection movement: law, risk management, technology, and community.

Fulton and Rejeski urge environmental policymakers to continue to think about how these drivers will interact with the development of new technology, big data, and private environmental governance.

Identifying these drivers is just the first step; Fulton and Rejeski reflect that there are many remaining issues to pursue in the future, which raise a host of questions.

To what extent can these new drivers compensate for government failure or inability to act? How does the fast pace of technology interact within the slower changing, legacy law and policy systems, and how might one design the interface between them?

These questions are certainly important for the future of environmental protection. People Places Planet will continue to move these types of conversations forward.

Podcasts are available for download on the ELI website or from your favorite podcast app.

 

Deep cuts in carbon emissions require workable legal pathways

ELI was involved in producing two landmark publications in early 2019. The First Global Report on Environmental Rule of Law and the full version of Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (a summary version of which was released last year) address the pressing issues of worldwide environmental protection and avenues for progress in the coming decades.

Over the past two years, ELI engaged with UN Environment to develop the first report. Environmental rule of law is critical for worldwide sustainable economic and social development, protects public health, contributes to peace and security by avoiding and defusing conflict, and protects human and constitutional rights.

UN Environment released the report to offer frameworks to address the gap between environmental laws on the books — and what is actually in practice — for countries around the world. The report is available for free download on the ELI web page.

In addition, the full version of Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization will be released in March 2019. The book equips policymakers and practitioners with over 1,000 recommendations for legal pathways to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Edited by Michael Gerrard, professor at Columbia Law School, and John Dernbach, professor at Widener University Commonwealth Law School, the book is based on two reports by the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project. The project discusses the technical and policy pathways for dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon abatement goals are often referred to as deep decarbonization, a charted pathway that requires systemic changes to the energy economy.

Deep decarbonization is achievable in the United States using laws that exist or could be enacted. These legal tools can be employed with significant economic, social, environmental, and national security benefits. The book provides legal and policymaking leaders the means to begin implementing these tools to tackle emissions reductions in the coming years.

 

Field Notes: Profession loses two leaders in enviro protection

ELI has learned with great sadness of the passing of two giants in the implementation of environmental law. Both were integral to the Institute’s mission, offered great knowledge and wisdom, and were important members of the ELI community.

Douglas Keare passed away on January 8 at 84 years old. He was an important member of the ELI family as part of the Leadership Council, and in shaping and supporting the ELI-Miriam Hamilton Keare Policy Forum each year.

The annual policy forum honors his mother, a noted environmentalist, and focuses on bringing key stakeholders together to discuss the most urgent environmental issues and advance solutions. Keare was an important thought leader for the forum due to his avid interest in the topics. He often pitched interesting ideas for discussions in the planning stage and asked the resulting panel engaging questions during the annual event.

Keare received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. His career and passions were shaped around his belief in the power of cities to spark progress and secure the future.

Keare was the first head of the World Bank unit responsible for urban research and policy and led it for 25 years. He also held important positions in Malaysia and East Pakistan (Bangladesh) with the bank.

Keare also was involved in work for the Harvard Institute for International Development and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. He retired in Boston, Massachusetts, at which point he became a generous donor and involved with ELI’s research and program activities.

Judge Patricia Gowan Wald died in January at age 90. Wald received the ELI Environmental Achievement Award in 2000 for her central role in creating modern environmental jurisprudence during her long tenure on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, including five years as chief judge.

After retirement from that position, she served as an international jurist in The Hague on the tribunal adjudicating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Her legacy remains in her legal and environmental work and in her determination to pave the way for women in the legal profession.

In her award acceptance speech, Wald discussed the intersection of concerns she addressed over domestic environmental statutes and those in international criminal cases. She emphasized that ultimately, quality of life depends on peaceful and non-destructive relationships with one another, and harmony with the environment.

Wald graduated from Yale University Law School in 1951. She began her legal career as the only female law clerk in the Second Circuit. During the Carter administration, she served as the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, and soon after was nominated as the fourth woman on the D.C. Court.

Although the 1970s was the primary period for passing landmark statutes, Wald’s position in the D.C. circuit court during the 1980s allowed her to make a lasting impact on how to interpret and apply the statutes passed by Congress. Her opinion in Sierra Club v. Costle in 1981, upholding EPA emission standards for coal-burning power plants, quickly grew to be a frequently cited opinion to support presidential rulemaking.

Her lifetime of achievement was honored by Barack Obama in 2013, when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

ELI continues its work in China through environmental training workshops at universities in Beijing. In January, over one hundred NGO workers, judges, prosecutors, and public interest lawyers attended ELI’s workshop at Renmin University, taught by ELI Vice President John Pendergrass and Visiting Scholar Leslie Carothers.

ELI teamed with Latham & Watkins and the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy to hold the second Chinese International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance roundtable on January 15 in Beijing. Launched last year, the dialogue is a working group designed to facilitate discussion between multinational businesses and Chinese authorities regarding best practices in government and industry in the area of environmental regulation, as well as the forward movement of environmental protection in China.

ELI launches 50th anniversary program series.

Guidance Needed for Practitioners on Some Discharges to Groundwater
Author
Ethan Shenkman - Arnold & Porter
Arnold & Porter
Current Issue
Issue
2
Ethan Shenkman

The Clean Water Act does not cover groundwater. But what if an aquifer acts as a “conduit” to surface water? Is a facility liable if pollutants discharged into groundwater eventually flow into “waters of the United States,” which are covered under the act? Must facilities obtain permits in such circumstances?

The answer to these questions has been about as clear as mud. Practitioners are watching to see if the Supreme Court will take up the issue this term, to resolve a brewing circuit split, and if EPA and the Justice Department will finally clarify where the government stands.

The courts have been all over the map. For example, a recent Ninth Circuit case, County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, involved a locality-operated wastewater facility that used underground injection wells to dispose of treated sewage, where pollutants from the well seeped into the Pacific Ocean through groundwater. The court held that a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit was required because the pollutants originated “from a point source” and “are fairly traceable from the point source to a navigable water.”

The Fourth Circuit followed suit in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP v. Upstate Forever, where a pipeline in South Carolina ruptured, leaking gasoline into groundwater, which later contaminated local streams. The court held that the “direct hydrological connection between groundwater and navigable waters” meant the discharge was regulated by the CWA.

The Sixth Circuit has taken the opposite tack in a pair of recent cases, including Kentucky Waterways Alliance v. Kentucky Utilities Co., which rejected a CWA citizen suit based on chemicals stored in a coal ash pond that allegedly traveled through groundwater to a nearby lake. Expressly disagreeing with its sister circuits, the appeals court ruled that the definition of “discharge” requires that a point source deliver pollutants directly to navigable waters.

Meanwhile, the government has sent mixed signals. In 2016, DOJ filed an amicus brief in the County of Maui case, supporting the district court’s finding of liability, albeit on a narrower theory. “It has been EPA’s longstanding position that discharges moving through groundwater to a jurisdictional surface water are subject to CWA permitting requirements,” but only “if there is a ‘direct hydrological connection’ between the groundwater and the surface water,” Justice lawyers told the court. The department advocated a case-by-case inquiry, recognizing that “some hydrological connections are too circuitous and attenuated to come under the CWA.”

The amicus brief would have required authorization from the solicitor general — entailing a rigorous review process — which meant the government’s position was now pretty well defined, right? Not so fast.

In February 2018, EPA published a notice soliciting input on whether it should continue to adhere to these views, in particular, on whether and to what extent “subjecting such releases to CWA permitting is consistent with the text, structure, and purpose of the CWA.” The agency said it would clarify its views through “memoranda, guidance, or in the form of rulemaking” to “provide additional certainty for the public and the regulated community.” But EPA has yet to act.

Fast forward to December. In response to petitions for certiorari filed in the Ninth and Fourth circuit cases, the Supreme Court issued a formal request for the views of the solicitor general, and, in an unusual move, ordered a response under a tight deadline, putting the government’s feet to the fire.

The United States submitted an amicus brief urging the Court to grant certiorari to decide “whether a ‘discharge of a pollutant,’ . . . occurs when a pollutant is released from a point source, travels through groundwater, and ultimately migrates to navigable waters.” Notably, however, the SG, keeping his cards close to the vest, was silent as to how EPA itself would answer that question. Rather, he reported that the agency would issue clarification “within the next several weeks.” The SG nonetheless declared a strong interest in resolving the matter, which “has the potential to affect federal, state, and tribal regulatory efforts in innumerable circumstances nationwide.”

Practitioners seeking to advise their clients are watching these developments closely. Will the Supreme Court agree to hear the case? Will EPA articulate its views, either through guidance or rulemaking, and if so, will it adhere to its Ninth Circuit arguments, flip positions, or land somewhere in between? And wherever the agency lands, will DOJ continue to argue that EPA’s interpretation is entitled to Chevron deference? Meanwhile, if the Supreme Court grants the case, practitioners will be looking for clues as to what kind of interpretive approach the justices might take if and when they have the chance to review the agency’s ongoing rule redefining “waters of the United States.”

Guidance needed for practitioners on some discharges to groundwater.

Climate Litigation Has at Least for Now Dodged a Possibly Fatal Blow
Author
Richard Lazarus - Harvard University
Harvard University
Current Issue
Issue
2
Richard Lazarus

This past fall, the “Trial of the Century” was scheduled to commence in a federal court in Oregon. The plaintiffs? Twenty-one children. The defendant? No less than the United States. And the accusation? That the federal government had violated the children’s constitutional rights by “creating, controlling, and perpetuating a national fossil fueled based energy system, despite long-standing knowledge of the resulting destruction.”

The remedy sought by the plaintiffs was no less ambitious than their claim that the Constitution’s Due Process Clause confers on individuals the right to “a stable climate system capable of sustaining human lives and liberties.” Plaintiffs sought a court order directing the government to implement “an enforceable national remedial plan to cease the constitutional violations by phasing out fossil fuel emissions and drawing down excess atmospheric CO2.”

The 50-day trial seemed unstoppable only days before its start date. The judge had repeatedly denied the government’s motions to dismiss the complaint. No less significantly, by declining to certify the case for interlocutory appeal, the judge had refused to allow the federal government the ability to appeal those rulings before trial.

Nor had either the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court been willing to come to the federal government’s rescue. The Ninth Circuit had twice denied the Department of Justice’s mandamus petitions to hear their arguments for dismissal before trial. And the Supreme Court in July had rebuffed the solicitor general’s request to stay the trial court proceedings.

Everything shifted, however, on the eve of trial. The case was postponed and its future remains uncertain. Reversing herself in late November, the trial judge agreed to certify the case for interlocutory appeal and the Ninth Circuit has scheduled the case for expedited consideration.

So what happened? What prompted the trial judge to change her mind?

When the justices denied the solicitor general’s request for a stay in July, too little attention was paid to the order’s fine print. While formally denying the government’s requests, the High Court simultaneously left little doubt it believed that the trial judge should have certified the case for interlocutory appeal. The July order set forth the central statutory touchstone for certification — a case raising a “controlling question of law as to which there is a substantial ground for difference in opinion” — and then offered the Court’s clear view that the “striking breadth of the plaintiffs’ claims present substantial grounds for difference in opinion.”

That is why when the trial court failed to take the initial hint and continued to insist on trial, the justices double-downed when the solicitor general a few days before trial filed a mandamus petition with the Court and again asked the justices to stay the trial. This time Chief Justice Roberts immediately stayed the trial to allow the full Court to consider the motion. And, although the Court once again denied the stay request, here again the fine print of the Court’s order left little doubt that it wanted the Ninth Circuit and trial judge to clean up this mess so that the Supreme Court would not have to take the extraordinary step of intervening.

The exclusive reason the High Court gave for denying a stay was not that mandamus was unwarranted but that the Supreme Court need not be the one to grant mandamus because there was good reason to believe the Ninth Circuit would. In Supreme Court-speak, that is about as close as one can get, short of a formal reversal, to the Court telling the Ninth Circuit to fix the problem. The wording was no doubt a compromise reached by the chief and some of more liberal justices seeking to avoid a worse outcome.

The Ninth Circuit plainly got the hint. A few days later, the appeals court stayed the district court proceedings and asked the trial judge to “promptly resolve” the government’s motion to reconsider the denial of interlocutory appeal. And, while insisting that it had not changed “its belief that this case would be better served by further factual development at trial,” the district judge subsequently made clear she understood what she was being asked to do, and certified the case for interlocutory appeal.

Indeed, the entire turnabout was so head-spinning that one of the three Ninth Circuit judges dissented from that court’s decision to hear the appeal. Judge Michelle Friedland wrote she did not believe the trial judge was truly “of the opinion” that interlocutory appeal was warranted but had “felt compelled to make that declaration.”

As disappointed as the plaintiffs no doubt are, I suspect climate litigation has at least for now dodged a fatal blow. Had the lower courts not retreated and the justices been forced to act, it is not hard to imagine the harsh ruling that would have likely resulted in such an extravagant case — with negative repercussions affecting all climate jurisprudence.

It is not hard to imagine the harsh ruling that would have likely resulted.

Climate litigation has at least for now dodged a possibly fatal blow.

Climate and Controversy
Author
Joel B. Stronberg - The JBS Group
The JBS Group
Current Issue
Issue
2
Climate and Controversy

There are few public forums to debate the causes and consequences of climate change where the participants won’t find themselves mired in a political maelstrom. On the federal level, where national policies are worked out, partisan gridlock in Congress has taken the legislative branch of government out of play. The current administration has by acts and deeds indicated it has no intention of combatting climate change — quite the opposite. That leaves the fortunes of U.S. climate policies largely dependent upon the composition of the courts, the branch that is concerned only with matters of law and immune from politics.

Carbon emissions in the United States and other big economies like China, India, and elsewhere are on the rise. According to the Trump administration’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in November, neither global efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change nor regional efforts to adapt to the impacts currently approach the scales needed to avoid substantial damage to the U.S. economy, our natural heritage, and the health and well-being of Americans. The conclusions reached by the 13 federal agencies and 300 scientists contributing to the assessment reflect the overwhelming consensus of the science community. They affirm the October report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which set the maximum safe level of warming at only 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Both reports emphasize the urgent need for government action. They identify — with a high degree of confidence — the costly consequences of climate change. These include not only more frequent and intense weather events but also higher rates of morbidity and mortality and lost jobs and investment opportunities in industries affected by carbon emissions, such as fishing, farming, forestry, and insurance.

As the U.S. government fails to put in place policies to combat global warming and adapt to its repercussions, the courts are emerging as the preferred venue in which to debate climate science free of partisan bias and bickering. Citizens are calling for action, and the number of climate-related lawsuits is increasing globally, and nowhere more than in the United States. The cases fall into four broad categories. Some would force government to increase (or some decrease) regulatory oversight and enforcement of existing laws. Others characterize climate change as a rights-based issue. Still others seek to establish climate change as a financial concern. And a final category of cases are designed to contribute to the public debate about the changes to the Earth’s climate system. Naturally there is some overlap, but these distinctions are useful in evaluating the judiciary’s response to global warming.

The most common climate-related cases brought before the courts in the United States continue to be those questioning government regulatory actions involving emissions from coal-fired power plants. Challenges to government regulatory actions have been bidirectional. Obama’s aggressive efforts to combat climate change and protect the environment prompted fossil fuel interests, for instance coal mine operators, to challenge the government’s regulatory authority under existing legislation such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. Plaintiffs in the Trump era, however, are predictably suing to prevent the administration from rolling back existing regulations.

Regulatory litigation relies heavily on court precedents, particularly the Chevron doctrine establishing judicial deference to expert agencies, as well as conformity with the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirements for proper notice and public input, and interpretation of legislative language to yield enumerated or implied agency authority. Science in these types of cases plays more of a supporting role. In Massachusetts v. EPA, for example, the Supreme Court was asked in 2007 if the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles.

It was the Court’s opinion that EPA is obligated under the CAA to regulate auto emissions which in the administrator’s “judgment cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution . . . reasonably . . . anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The Court directed the agency to reconsider its conclusions — although the majority opinion left little doubt about the dangers of vehicle emissions. “The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized,” the Massachusetts court said. “The government’s own objective assessment of the relevant science and a strong consensus among qualified experts indicate that global warming threatens, inter alia, a precipitate rise in sea levels, severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems, a significant reduction in winter snowpack with direct and important economic consequences, and increases in the spread of disease and the ferocity of weather events.” Still, the Court’s instructions to EPA were to consider whether the above events rise to the threshold required to make an endangerment finding under the CAA and the basis for any regulation of the vehicle emissions at issue. That has left combating climate change up to the political branches, which have been deadlocked on the issue for decades.

Into the breach, a new class of cases claiming the right of citizens to a habitable environment is gaining entrance into state and federal courts, and other cases are inviting the judiciary to be more involved in resolving the controversies surrounding climate change. After all, the Constitution grants to the courts the power and ability to decide “cases and controversies,” and that is exactly what is happening here.

In 2015, a U.S. district court judge in Oregon granted standing to 21 youthful plaintiffs claiming that future generations have a substantive right to be protected from the ravages of climate change under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. The youths fault the government for inaction in the face of hard evidence. The relief sought by the plaintiffs is science-based policies and regulations to mitigate the impacts of global warming.

The case, Juliana v. United States, has survived multiple attempts — including two before the Supreme Court — to have it dismissed as a political question. Administration attorneys contend that EPA is charged with regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and the court’s intervention confounds the separation of powers on which our political system is based. The case is back before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after the trial judge certified the government’s request for an interlocutory appeal. A decision is expected by the end of March.

Juliana has inspired a host of similar cases — particularly in state courts, where the Public Trust Doctrine has more foundation — around the nation. Should Juliana or other rights-based cases continue to survive dismissal motions, it will be the first time climate science is put on trial.

Another series of cases making it onto court dockets are those based on common law nuisance theory — tortious negligence. Examples of these types of cases are the recent — and so far, unsuccessful — lawsuits by cities, counties, and states seeking compensation from major oil companies for infrastructure damage and other losses attributable to climate change. Many wastewater and drinking water plants are affected by sea-level rise, as are roadways, ports, etc. These cases are similar to the tobacco suits by state governments of the 1980s and 1990s.

In late 2018, in a rare case in which two private entities were party to a climate suit, a food industry sued fossil fuel companies. A California court has granted the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations standing to sue major oil producers. The petitioner is the largest commercial fishing trade group on the West Coast. On behalf of Dungeness crab fisheries, the organization is seeking $445 million in compensatory damages as a result of toxic algae blooms. The blooms, caused by warming Pacific waters, delayed the opening of the crab season off the California and Oregon coasts, creating economic losses for which recovery is sought. (The Department of Commerce has already allocated $15 million from available disaster assistance funds to help the industry.) The plaintiffs in the crab fishing case, like the state and local governments, are claiming the defendant companies have known for nearly half a century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution. The case may open the door to future negligence suits by private companies against the fossil fuel industry.

Major oil companies and the federal government are not the only ones being sued for knowing the causes and consequences of climate change and choosing to do nothing about it. In 2013 a deluge that overwhelmed a labyrinth of aging sewers and giant tunnels, forcing a noxious mix of sewage and stormwater into local waterways and Lake Michigan, resulted in a lawsuit by Farmers Insurance Company against Chicago-area municipalities for negligently failing to upgrade their systems. An insurance industry expert said of the suit that the companies are in the business of covering unforeseen risks, from accidents. But we’re now at a point with the science where climate change is a foreseeable risk. Thus, a common thread running through the tort cases is establishing what the defendants knew and when.

Importantly, the litigation involves establishing and apportioning liability to monetize damages. These are acts that rely heavily on understanding and accepting climate science as it has grown over the years, and are areas where courts are particularly able to sort out the issues. Theoretically, a courtroom should be the most trusted venue for a rigorous climate-science debate. The judge in City of Oakland v. BP P.L.C., a district court common law nuisance case against major oil companies decided last year, asked the litigants to conduct a two-hour briefing on the science of climate change. In the briefing the opponents in the case all agreed that climate change is as real and damaging as the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists say it is. The case was dismissed, however, on the grounds that the matter at issue is a political question for the legislative and executive branches to answer. Judge William Alsup, however, articulated his belief that temperatures are rising: “This [court] order fully accepts the vast scientific consensus that the combustion of fossil fuels has materially increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which in turn has increased the median temperature of the planet and accelerated sea-level rise.”

The growing appeal to the judiciary to accomplish what the legislative and executive branches are politically incapable of doing is understandable. As a practical matter, however, the courts alone offer a less than ideal alternative to congressional and executive action. Lawsuits, at one level, are zero-sum. A plaintiff is granted standing to sue or told to go home. Dismissal of a case may be for procedural reasons having nothing to do with the scientific substance of the allegations. Moreover, these emerging classes of cases can take years to reach a conclusion, as the Juliana plaintiffs are finding out nearly four years into their litigation, with a trial yet to be held.

However, long before the last gavel is struck, and the final decision read, climate-rights and liability cases have much to contribute. Through discovery, evidence, testimony, and cross examination, the lawsuits are becoming rich troves of information that may have equal or greater probative value in the court of public opinion than in a court of law.

In the wake of the recent dismissal in City of Oakland are records of the defendant oil companies having agreed with plaintiffs’ factual statements on the causes and consequences of global warming. No matter the outcome in Juliana, the Trump administration has accepted the truth of the mainstream climate-science community and the reality of Earth’s warming.

Notwithstanding the possibility these cases may never be victorious in terms of a binary winning or losing, they present an opportunity for climate defenders and deniers to face off in a moderated, nonpartisan venue governed by longstanding rules of evidence and procedure. Sworn testimony subject to cross-examination offers a counterpoint to ipse dixit pronouncements of opinion in partisan legislative hearings or presidential tweets.

According to Gallup’s last available poll, Republican trust in the judicial branch has gone from 48 percent in 2016 to 79 percent in 2017. At the same time, Republicans, in general, hold the lowest opinions of climate science and climate scientists, according to the Pew Research Center. The distrust of scientists based on their perceived political leanings makes it nearly impossible to expect that deniers will become believers when confronted with hard scientific evidence. So a neutral means of deciding issues concerned with climate science is absolutely essential to convince those who still doubt humanity’s role in warming and required actions.

In Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Jeep v. Crombie, the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont upheld the state’s plan to approve greenhouse gas emission regulations for new motor vehicles. Vermont’s plan was consistent with the Clean Air Act’s California exemption clause. The litigants both called upon expert testimony concerning the causes and consequences of climate change.

The Green Mountain court noted the Supreme Court’s 1993 conclusions in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, in which the High Court enumerated a list of four non-exclusive considerations bearing on whether a theory is scientifically sufficient to constitute reliable evidence. As stated by the Daubert court, a sufficiency analysis is quantitative rather than qualitative, and “facts or data” may include reliable opinions of other experts and hypotheses that are supported by the evidence. In addition to the four factors listed in Daubert, courts consider whether the expert is testifying about matters based on research independent of the litigation.

To be admitted into evidence an expert’s opinion must be derived by recognized scientific methodologies. Courts are not required to “admit opinion evidence that is connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert,” as stated in General Electric Co. v. Joiner (1997). An example of such testimony is President Trump’s recent comment that he has a “natural instinct for science” and his uncle was a scientist at MIT, and therefore he knows that climate change is a bogus theory.

Still, climate science isn’t as well-founded as the physics of celestial bodies, for example. But if most scientists are to be believed, immediate action is necessary. A practical consequence of evidentiary rules is the judiciary’s acceptance of reliable testimony that need not be “known to a certainty.” As the judge in Green Mountain wrote, “There are no certainties in science.” Thus, actions to avoid a highly likely risk are called for in the case of climate change, just as we minimize risk of exposure to chemicals that we only suspect of carcinogenicity.

Documents in the Juliana case are now available; they include reports by the litigants’ respective experts. The reports vary in length and detail and are a preview of what the experts will be testifying to in open court. Consider the report of scientists Susan Pacheco and Jerome Paulson, who were retained by the plaintiffs. Their opposite on the defendant’s side is Arthur Partikian. Note when reading the excerpts below that standing requires that a plaintiff must have suffered an actual injury or harm, traceable to the actions of the defendant, and capable of redress by the court.

Although children are not considered a suspect class under the law, the age of the Juliana plaintiffs is integral to their allegations. Pacheco and Paulson state: “Children are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to their physiological features, including their higher respiratory rate, lung growth, and development, immature immune system. . . . [C]ertain populations of children are especially vulnerable. . . [including] children with preexisting medical conditions, children from communities of color, and economically disadvantaged children.”

Partikian responds: “While I do not contest the general concept that factors mentioned by the plaintiffs’ experts as potentially associated with climate change. . . I do not find adequate documentation in the available records and reports.”

Other experts called to the witness stand will testify on whether the nation can run solely on low-carbon technologies like wind and solar. The economic and monetary costs of the transition to a clean energy economy will be debated, as will the social cost of carbon. Ultimately, a jury will have to decide the value of the evidence and what actions, if any, are required by the parties.

In reading through the voluminous motions, complaints, and reports in the novel-legal-claims cases, what is most startling is what they seem not to be about — whether global climate change is real or a hoax. The Trump administration in Juliana has stipulated to the plaintiffs’ statements about the existence of global warming, recognized its harmful consequences, and acknowledged that humans are contributors to the problem in much the same manner as the oil companies are doing in the nuisance cases. The issues, rather, are fault, apportionment, and appropriate response.

The willingness of oil companies and the Trump administration to accede to the petitioner’s climate characterizations reflects a shift in the public position of “mainstream” climate-deniers in recent years. That change was on prominent display during the confirmation hearings of Scott Pruitt to EPA, Ryan Zinke to Interior, Rex Tillerson to the State Department, and other of Trump’s nominees. The new tactic accepts, with certain caveats, that climate change is afoot and acknowledges that human activity is “somehow” a contributor.

In recent months the Trump administration has added a closing statement to the acknowledgment. Buried in a draft environmental impact statement supporting the proposed freeze of auto emission standards at 2020 levels, the administration indicates that any meaningful effort to combat climate change “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy . . . to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically . . . or economically feasible.”

The statement is not made as a call to arms but as a fatalistic foreboding of what the future will hold. The “yes, but there is nothing that can reasonably be done about it” protestations of deniers in public policy arenas is a version of the challenges plaintiffs face in a trial. Should deniers lose in court, they will find there is something to be done and at a price.

It is arguable that the court’s order to do the inventory and in essence draft what for all intents and purposes would be Obama’s Clean Power Plan on steroids could be slowed, if not stopped, by a hostile Congress and White House. In any event whatever would come of the order would be back in the courts from the moment a notice of intent was published in the Federal Register.

Realistically combating climate change will take more than a court’s ordering EPA to write regulations. Absent political considerations of deployment, technological solutions only work on paper. It is not to say that the government is right and that Juliana and other novel-theory cases should be dismissed because the courts would be stepping out of their co-equal role and doing the job of policymaking that is reserved for the legislature and the executive.

Bringing policy considerations into the courtroom will prove as valuable to the public debate as taking validated scientific evidence established in the courtroom and putting it into the court of public opinion. An understanding of the political context — in reality, and not as a hypothetical construct — will help to guide the courts in their consideration of redressability, for example, by allowing the government flexibility to attack the problems from multiple directions.

Synergies exist between court proceedings and public policy debates. Courts are loathe to consider future injuries both because of their speculative nature — there is no guarantee that injuries will arise, and there is difficulty in monetizing the damage that might occur 20 years into the future. In contrast, it is natural for public policies to anticipate and respond to problems likely to pop up in the future, such as increasing a community’s resilience to extreme weather events.

The court testimony of the Juliana medical experts would naturally address the potential damages of cumulative exposure to a climate altered by the release of carbon dioxide, methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and other GHGs. Testimony in the fishing damages case will not only speak to the consequences of warming oceans from carbon released by burning oil but will convert climate concerns into dollar and cents. Although courts may not account for anticipatory damage in their orders and opinions, the information introduced into evidence during the trial would strengthen the public policy debate outside of the courtroom, even if the case is dismissed.

The hyper-partisanship preventing a balanced discussion on climate science in the halls of Congress and the White House also prevents a balanced and rational discussion on possible cures. The value of the courts is not simply to be measured in terms of final outcomes. Under partisan circumstances, the judiciary remains the only venue in which an honest and objective climate debate can occur.

In answer to the government’s claim that a courtroom is not the proper setting in which to weigh the evidence in support of climate change theory, the magistrate judge in Juliana stated: “Whether . . . climate change is occurring, whether . . . human induced, and the degree of its severity and impact on the global climate, natural environment, human health is quintessentially a subject of scientific study and methodology, not solely political debate. The judicial forum is particularly well-suited for the resolution of factual and expert scientific disputes, providing an opportunity for all parties to present evidence, under oath and subject to cross-examination in a process that is public, open, and on the record.”

Redressing the harms alleged by plaintiffs is time constrained. It has already taken the youthful petitioners in Juliana several years to get to trial. How many more years will go by before the Supreme Court makes the final judgment in the case? How many years after that will be required for EPA to do the emissions inventory and draft and implement a new power plan? Should the defendant government and companies in these novel-theory cases start losing in court, they will find there is something to be done and at a price. Yet the latest findings of climate science make it clear that immediate, large-scale actions are required.

Neither the Juliana plaintiffs nor others in pending or anticipated climate-science cases should be expected to carry the burden of a livable environment alone. The growing number of climate-related lawsuits based on novel legal theories will continue to expand at least as long as the government fails to put partisanship aside and do what is necessary to stem Earth’s warming and increase the nation’s resilience to the effects already being experienced.

As different as the emerging novel-legal-theory cases are they share the same objective — a livable environment. Win or lose each can contribute to the overall efforts of climate defenders. What was the role of science in each case? What arguments swayed judges and jurors? Where do the litigants’ experts agree; were there gaps in a plaintiff’s arguments that need to be filled? Did the public rallies in support of the Juliana plaintiffs change the community’s perception of global warming? Is the relief asked for in one case duplicative or additive to what was requested in another? Can the cases be better coordinated to create more holistic solutions to global warming?

Although each climate case is unique, they all share the same objective — a habitable global environment. Legal and policy advocates need to come together to develop an integrated strategy designed to prevail in the court of public opinion as well as of law. Even if a plaintiff loses a case, pursuing it may be validated if the court’s decision includes statements that may be useful for the larger purpose of convincing the public and prodding the political branches to action as a result. TEF

LEAD FEATURE ❧ As a locus for fact-finding and evaluating competing claims while the political branches are deadlocked, the courtroom can be the perfect neutral venue for debating climate science, policy responses, and who should pay. Current litigation could tee up such conclusions.

Clean Air Act Practitioners Debate Brett Kavanaugh's Judicial Record
Author
Ethan Shenkman - Arnold & Porter
Arnold & Porter
Current Issue
Issue
1
Ethan Shenkman

“I have upheld agencies in dozens and dozens of cases,” insisted now-Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, parrying questions from Democratic senators accusing him of leading an effort to “rein in” executive agencies. Meanwhile, environmental commentators offered dueling versions of his record.

The Heritage Foundation, for example, touted examples of environmental victories penned by Kavanaugh. Earthjustice, by contrast, proclaimed that he had ruled against the environment 89 percent of the time. Observers noted that he recognized climate change as a “pressing policy issue.” At the same time, he posited a narrow vision of EPA’s statutory authority, admonishing that “climate change is not a blank check for the president.”

Clean Air Act practitioners are well familiar with Kavanaugh’s body of work from his service on the D.C. Circuit. No other Supreme Court nominee had been as steeped in the act. Often referred to as the second highest court in the land, the D.C. Circuit is clearly the most important court for the Air Act, given its exclusive jurisdiction over EPA’s nationwide rules and actions.

And Judge Kavanaugh stood out among his peers. He was a key protagonist in the D.C. Circuit’s last three air cases that went up to the Supreme Court, voting against EPA each time. His dissent (from the denial of rehearing en banc) questioning the agency’s authority to treat greenhouse gases as a “pollutant” for purposes of stationary source permitting was vindicated in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA (2014). His decision striking down the agency’s regulation of interstate transport of pollutants was reversed in EPA v. EME Homer City Generation (2014). And his dissenting opinion proved to be prescient in Michigan v. EPA (2015), involving the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, as the Supreme Court ultimately agreed with his criticism of the agency’s failure to consider costs. His decisions were driven by his judicial philosophy: intense textual analysis; skepticism of Chevron deference; insistence on clear statements from Congress; proponent of cost-benefit analysis.

The picture may not be as stark as some contend. From January 2014 through September 2018, the D.C. Circuit issued 52 decisions and substantive orders in CAA cases. By my count, EPA had a winning average of 73 percent in those cases — 38 favorable or largely favorable, 10 unfavorable, 4 mixed. Kavanaugh participated in 17 of these cases, authoring opinions in 11 of them.

Each of these cases was decided during the Obama administration or involved review of Obama-era regulations. EPA’s record here was 14-2-1 — winning 82 percent. By comparison, Kavanaugh’s voting record in these 17 cases was 12 in favor of EPA, 3 against, and 2 mixed, thus ruling for EPA about 71 percent of the time.

How did Kavanaugh’s voting record compare to that of his colleagues? The 17 cases produced 51 individual votes, with three judges on each panel. All told, EPA’s record was 41 votes for, 6 against, and 4 mixed (an 80 percent favorability percentage). Kavanaugh’s voting record for EPA (71 percent favorable) was somewhat lower than average. That remains true even if we break down the 51 votes among Democratic-appointed judges (83 percent favorable to EPA) and Republican-appointed judges (79 percent favorable).

Of course, these data reflect a five-year snapshot, not his whole tenure on the bench. Moreover, the agency is sued by environmental groups as often as it is sued by industry. And these cases run the gamut from profound questions of congressional purpose to routine administrative-law cases decided on procedural grounds. Nonetheless, measuring a judge’s record based on how the agency fared provides at least one objective benchmark for practitioners.

Taking the data with an appropriate grain of salt, what do they show? In general, they paint a picture of EPA having a very good CAA record in the D.C. Circuit, winning around three-quarters of its cases, with a noticeably, but not radically, better record before Democratic-appointed judges. And Kavanaugh’s record — while indicating somewhat lower than average favorability for EPA compared with his peers — fits generally within this pattern.

Practitioners also look for clues in two important CAA cases where Kavanaugh criticized environmental positions at argument but did not vote. In the hearing on the Clean Power Plan in 2016, Kavanaugh led the charge in questioning EPA’s authority. More recently, a decision by a two-judge panel, issued in 2018 after Kavanaugh recused himself, set aside the current EPA’s two-year delay of the prior administration’s amendments bolstering the act’s risk management program for chemical facilities. The panel decried the agency for making a “mockery” of the statute, but Kavanaugh’s questions at oral argument indicate that he may have harbored greater sympathy for the Trump EPA’s ability to change policy direction.

Clean Air Act practitioners debate Brett Kavanaugh's judicial record.

Kavanaugh's Ascent Is Enormously Significant for Environmental Law
Author
Richard Lazarus - Harvard University
Harvard University
Current Issue
Issue
1
Richard Lazarus

Justice Brett Kavanaugh. What does his joining the High Court mean for environmental law? How will he differ from Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he clerked and now replaces?

Normally, any such comparative inquiry would be hopelessly speculative even when, as here, the new justice has previously served as a federal appellate judge. Most judges, as was true for Neil Gorsuch on the Tenth Circuit, have decided very few environmental law cases.

Kavanaugh, however, is a rare counter-example. The docket of the D.C. Circuit, on which Kavanaugh served for 13 years, includes a heavy dose of environmental law. And, although the three-judge panels for those environmental law cases were decided by random draw, Kavanaugh participated and otherwise wrote in a disproportionately high number, especially Clean Air Act cases. Moreover, because the Supreme Court (including Kennedy) reviewed several of those cases, Kavanaugh’s appellate court record offers a solid basis for gleaning both how he is likely to vote as a justice and how his votes might (or might not) differ from Kennedy’s.

Here’s what environmental lawyers can fairly expect from Justice Kavanaugh. First, he will be a reliable vote against broad readings of EPA’s statutory authority to enact pollution-control regulations. This will be true when the agency is challenged by environmentalists for embracing narrow interpre-tations of its authority. And it will be true when industry challenges EPA for adopting broad interpretations.

In both respects, Kavanaugh will likely mirror the votes of Justice Antonin Scalia when he was on the Court. The difference will be style rather than substance. Kavanaugh will lack Scalia’s bite and bark.

Kavanaugh’s votes on EPA’s regulatory reach will be markedly different from Kennedy’s. While the retired jurist sided with Scalia in many cases, he also departed from him in several significant environmental law cases in which Kavanaugh, had he been on the Court at the time, would have voted differently. Unlike Kennedy, a Justice Kavanaugh would have denied Justice John Paul Stevens the majority he had for the Court’s ruling that the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate greenhouse gases (Massachusetts v. EPA), he would have provided Scalia with the majority he lacked for his narrow reading of the geographic reach of the Clean Water Act (Rapanos v. United States), and he would clearly have struck down EPA’s interstate air pollution regulation (EPA v. EME Homer Generation LP.), given that the justices, including Kennedy, reversed Kavanaugh’s opinion for the D.C. Circuit on that issue.

For that same reason, many of EPA’s most ambitious regulatory programs adopted during the Obama administration, such as the Waters of the United States Rule, would likely be roughly received with Kavanaugh rather than Kennedy on the Court. The only saving grace for EPA’s Clean Power Plan, should its legality ever somehow reach the justices, is that Kavanaugh would be recused, given his participation in the D.C. Circuit case.

Kavanaugh’s record further suggests a readiness to invoke constitutional law as a basis for limiting the reach of federal environmental law. Most notably, he has frequently invoked constitutional separation-of-powers principles in repudiating broad readings of EPA regulatory authority. According to Kavanaugh, those principles support judicial rejection of congressional delegation of agency authority to address “major issues” absent clear and specific evidence of such legislative intent.

By contrast, Kavanaugh’s views on the Article III standing of environmental citizen suit plaintiffs are not without some ambiguity. His record is less one-sided. But it seems safe to assume that he will be less receptive to such suits than Kennedy. What is unclear is whether he will replicate Scalia’s consistent hostility to citizen standing.

The same is true for Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause to enact environmental laws. Kavanaugh seems poised to be less sympathetic than Kennedy to a broad reading and there is too little known to speculate whether he will embrace Scalia’s narrow view of Congress’s constitutional reach.

One area of environmental law, however, for which we have no data is Kavanaugh’s views on the regulatory-taking issue. Kennedy was the decisive vote and, over Scalia’s dissent, frequently voted to reject takings challenges to governmental restrictions on development in environmentally sensitive lands. Kavanaugh had no takings cases on the D.C. Circuit (with those cases redirected to the Federal Circuit). If a true originalist like Robert Bork, he will give little credence to regulatory takings claims. But if more of a selective originalist like Scalia, Kennedy’s departure may signal a major shift in the Court’s takings precedent as well.

One thing is clear. Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation is enormously significant for environmental law.

We know his record.

Kavanaugh's ascent is enormously significant for environmental law.

ELI Report
Author
Laura Frederick - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
Issue
6

Judicial education fighting Indonesian deforestation through new civil society mechanisms designed to protect resources

ELI and the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law have been diligently carrying out a training project in the archipelago to help judges become a player in the fight against deforestation and the path toward sustainable development.

Indonesia is home to incredible biodiversity. The country covers only 1.3 percent of the planet’s surface but it is home to 4 percent of the world’s most ecologically undisturbed forests. Indonesia also possesses about 50 percent of the world’s tropical peatlands, which serve as an important carbon sink.

However, these natural resources are increasingly under threat from the pressures of a growing population and expanding, often unlawful economic activity that together are diminishing Indonesia’s rich biodiversity, threatening the health and livelihoods of communities that depend on natural resources, and releasing enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

To address these issues, there is a promising new legal tool in Indonesia enabling civil society organizations and the government to file claims to hold responsible parties liable for environmental damages. However, many judges lacked the knowledge and capacity to ensure this authority was effectively applied.

In response to requests from the Supreme Court’s Working Group for Judicial Certification on the Environment for support in its efforts to certify judges to rule on environmental issues, ELI’s Judicial Program and its collaborators developed a capacity-building curriculum to train the country’s judiciary to be a critical part of the efforts to improve environmental quality. ELI and the project team launched this curriculum in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, this summer.

ELI and partners convened a five-day workshop that brought together 38 judges from different regions of the country as well as three Supreme Court justices to discuss economic valuation, restoration, and compensation of environmental damages.

The workshop emphasized the role the environment plays in human well-being and economic prosperity, as well as limitations to ecosystem resilience in the face of degradation. Sessions addressed topics such as principles of environmental science, valuation of natural resources in the context of compensation and restoration, scientific evidence and uncertainty in the courts, standards of liability, and mechanisms for ensuring that judicial decisions are carried out.

The participants also had the opportunity to attend a field trip to a peat ecosystem affected by fires, providing the judges with a unique opportunity to observe the complex dynamics of damage and degradation to ecosystem services and to conduct experiments illustrating the challenge in collecting scientific evidence in these case.

By transferring critical knowledge to the judiciary to understand and address liability for environmental damages, this project will improve environmental quality in Indonesia by promoting environmental accountability through judicial enforcement. Ultimately, the benefits will include reduced deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions and improved biodiversity and quality of life, especially for vulnerable communities.

The curriculum draws on the local expertise of partners at ICEL. Judge Merideth Wright, a Distinguished Judicial Scholar with ELI and a former environmental judge for the state of Vermont, and Judge Anders Bengtsson of the Växjö Land and Environment Court in Sweden are contributing their experience as members of the judiciary.

ELI Visiting Scholar Carol Jones lent her expertise on the economics of valuing damage to the environment and Alejandra Rabasa, director of ELI’s Judicial Program, discussed scientific evidence and uncertainty.

This project is generously supported by the Swedish Postcode Foundation, an organization dedicated to seeking long-term solutions to local and global challenges.

 

Report helps trustees in natural resource damage process

Eight years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, restoration activities in the region remain ongoing. ELI’s gulf team has focused recent efforts on helping project trustees strategically coordinate their activities to make the most of time and material and financial resources.

In March the team released a paper that surveyed some of the tools available to Deepwater Horizon natural resource damage assessment trustees to help coordinate their activities.

As a follow up to this work, the Institute recently released Coordination in the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Process: Project Planning and Selection. Building on previous research, this guide describes some additional tools that are available during project planning and selection that could help coordinate the trustees’ activities internally within the NRDA program (namely, among the Trustee Implementation Groups) as well as with other entities. This paper focuses on project screening criteria, strategic frameworks, and joint restoration.

When selecting projects for their restoration plans, the TIGs use a systematic screening process. The TIGs could develop additional project screening criteria that will promote coordination with external entities, other TIGs, or both. Examples could include encouraging or favoring projects that leverage funds from outside sources, are consistent with existing plans or efforts, or leverage activities of other TIGs or external entities.

Strategic frameworks are another tool available during project planning and selection to help coordinate activities.

In 2017, the region-wide TIG released four strategic frameworks — one each for birds, marine mammals, oysters, and sea turtles. Frameworks such as these provide a useful starting point. They ensure that trustees and others have the same information about the resource.

There may be additional information the frameworks could provide to support coordination. For example, they could identify specific activities and mechanisms that support coordination.

Another tool that may be useful in helping the TIGs coordinate internally during project planning and selection is joint restoration planning. This type of planning could be an effective way for TIGs to coordinate across restoration areas.

 

Extra! ELI Breaking News webinars bring the latest developments

In response to demand for unbiased analysis, the Institute has been at the forefront of educating members and the public on impending changes in state and federal government policies and judicial action through Breaking News webinars, allowing the Institute to provide answers on the most recent relevant topics affecting environmental law in a timely fashion.

The first Breaking News webinar reflected on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court. For the past three decades, Kennedy had been a crucial swing vote on a variety of issues including the environment. His retirement came at an especially crucial time, as the Supreme Court’s 2019 docket includes cases that cover a litany of environmental issues. Attracting over 350 viewers, the webinar featured expert panelists exploring the influence Kennedy had on environmental law, and what his departure from the court could mean for the future.

The second Breaking News webinar discussed comprehensive changes proposed by the Department of the Interior and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in how the Endangered Species Act is implemented.

These regulations and policies address the species listing process, including the definition of “foreseeable future,” critical habitat designations, and the Section 7 process that directs all federal agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service when any agency action might affect an endangered or threatened species.

This panel provided an advanced look into potential benefits and repercussions of utilizing the ESA under this regulatory proposal. Each panelist highlighted his or her areas of interest in the proposals and described improvements that could be made in the process to finalize the regulations. The webinar allowed participants to learn about the proposed changes as they were opened to public comment.

ELI’s most recent webinar focused on the Waters of the United States regulatory decisions and the ramifications and implications of district court Judge Norton’s August decision to enjoin EPA’s suspension rule. His decision re-instated WOTUS as the applicable legal standard in 26 states not already subject to two prior district court injunctions staying WOTUS. Panelists from law firms, environmental groups, and industry discussed what this change means for the future of the Clean Water Act.

Believing in rational, nonpartisan discussion, ELI provides a perfect venue to explore these major changes in environmental governance. The Institute will continue to provide education on the most pressing and time-sensitive environmental issues.

 

Field Notes: Helping nation protect sensitive marine areas

At the 2017 Our Ocean Conference, Niue’s minister for natural resources, Dalton Tagelagi, announced that the South Pacific Island nation would create a marine protected area covering 40 percent of Niue’s Exclusive Economic Zone to conserve the unique marine diversity in national waters. The MPA will include the waters of the remote Beveridge Reef, a place of rich marine biodiversity.

ELI is helping the Niue government identify and conduct legal reforms to put this MPA into effect. After preliminary analysis by ELI, Ocean Program Director Xiao Recio-Blanco conducted a research trip to Niue to gather information on how to effectively enact the MPA within the nation’s legal framework, with a special focus on fisheries management. With the creation of the MPA, Niue hopes to promote itself as a prime global marine ecotourism destination.

In August, the Institute co-organized a global symposium on The Judiciary and the Environment: Adjudicating Our Future. The conference took place at the Organization of American States, which co-organized the event along with the Global Judicial Institute on the Environment, and the World Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Over two days, presidents of supreme courts and judges from around the world, as well as renowned experts, convened to discuss the challenges facing the judiciary in implementation and enforcement of environmental law.

ELI President Scott Fulton, who served on the symposium organizing committee, was present to provide welcoming remarks on behalf of the Institute. ELI Vice President of Programs and Publications John Pendergrass co-chaired a session on emerging principles and trends in environmental rule of law. ELI board member Nicholas Robinson and ELI Leadership Council Member Michael Gerrard were also present at the symposium as session co-chairs.

In devising new approaches for the management of materials and the diversion of wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, federal regulators can draw on their years of experience working with particular sectors and materials. In the retail sector, managing discarded and returned consumer aerosol cans can often require their management as hazardous waste. This waste stream also accounts for nearly half of the RCRA-regulated material in the retail sector, driving the status of stores as large-quantity generators.

On the other hand, these same cans, when disposed of by consumers in their homes, are treated as household waste and can be managed or recycled in other ways, including ways that involve substantial steel and aluminum recovery from municipal waste management. ELI released a research report exploring this incongruity. RCRA and Retail: Considering the Fate of Consumer Aerosol Cans examines the regulation of the retail sector, the fate and recovery of materials from aerosol cans, and opportunities for further action.

Showcasing ELI’s coast-to-coast reach, the Institute collaborated with Hunton Andrews Kurth’s San Francisco office to hold a summer series featuring key representatives from the region’s environmental regulatory agencies. The series of seminars provided attendees with the opportunity to interact with environmental regulators and professionals in the field on the latest issues and challenges.

ELI trains Indonesian judges on forest preservation.

Peak Behind the Curtain of Act Two of the Trump Environmental Policy
Author
Ethan Shenkman - Arnold & Porter
Arnold & Porter
Current Issue
Issue
6
Ethan Shenkman

As the curtain closes on Act One of the Trump administration, environmental law practitioners are looking ahead to Act Two. Intensive litigation over the first two years has produced a series of precedent-setting administrative law rulings testing the ability of the Executive Branch to delay, rescind, and reverse prior environmental policies. The next two years will involve a pivot from process to substance.

For those keeping score, the summer season did not end well for EPA. The Ninth Circuit, for example, struck down a rule that would have allowed continued residues of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food, ordering the agency to revoke tolerances and cancel registrations. That case was soon followed by a D.C. Circuit decision invalidating portions of EPA’s regulation governing disposal of coal ash residue by power plants. The court, having rejected the agency’s last-minute request to hold the case in abeyance pending reconsideration, denied industry’s petitions, granted those of environmentalists in part, and remanded to the agency, which is now tasked with crafting new limits stringent enough to satisfy the court.

The end of summer also produced a series of setbacks for agencies attempting to call time out on Obama-era regulations while they grappled with whether and how to reconsider those rules. In one dramatic development, a district court in South Carolina set aside Trump’s attempt to suspend for two years the Obama-era regulation defining the geographic reach of waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act. The judge admonished that “different administrations may implement different regulatory priorities, but the [Administrative Procedure Act] requires that the pivot from one administration’s priorities to those of the next be accompanied with at least some fidelity to law and legal process.”

This was only the latest chapter in the long-running saga surrounding the WOTUS rule, which had been issued in 2015 but enjoined from taking effect by the Sixth Circuit. That injunction was dissolved when the Supreme Court decided earlier this year that challenges to the rule had to be filed first in district court. The Army Corps of Engineers and EPA then acted promptly to suspend WOTUS so that it would not become enforceable while the agencies labored over a replacement rule that would feature a narrower interpretation inspired by Justice Antonin Scalia’s plurality opinion in Rapanos.

Judge David Norton held that the agencies violated the APA by bypassing notice-and-comment requirements and failing to consider the substantive implications of the suspension. The story is far from over, as litigants seek to expand the number of states in which WOTUS is enjoined pending judicial review, while appeals are pursued and environmental practitioners scramble to advise their clients on the cascade of developments.

In another important case on the power to delay, the D.C. Circuit set aside the Trump EPA’s rule postponing by 20 months the Obama EPA’s amendments bolstering the Risk Management Plan requirements under Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act, which regulates safety at chemical plants and similar facilities. The amendments, developed in response to high-profile accidents like the one in 2013 at a West Texas fertilizer plant, were due to take effect in 2017. The Trump administration issued a series of delay orders, culminating in a regulation to push back the effective dates while the agency reconsiders.

The court set aside the delay rule as arbitrary and capricious, adding teeth to the requirement that agencies provide a reasoned explanation for changes in position, and commenting that the rule was calculated not to ensure compliance but to enable non-compliance. At oral argument, Judge Brett Kavanaugh had expressed some sympathy with the administration’s prerogative to reconsider prior policies, but he recused himself before the case was decided, after being nominated to the Supreme Court. The two-judge panel remarked that EPA had made a “mockery” of the statute. Once again, practitioners have their hands full advising clients in a constantly shifting landscape.

Does this recent series of setbacks spell trouble for Act Two? Not necessarily. Act One has largely been about process. True, the skirmishing over an agency’s power to delay, rescind, and reconsider has long-reaching implications. Indeed, today’s litigants may live to regret some of these precedents, which could tie the hands of future administrations. But the current one is now busy finalizing a number of big-ticket items — moving beyond just repealing to replacing Obama-era regulations, such as WOTUS, the Clean Power Plan, and vehicle fuel-efficiency standards. As the substance of these programs is challenged in litigation, the next two years will likely feature a series of marquee cases in which these new policies are finally judged on their merits. There won’t be an empty seat in the house.

Peak behind the curtain of act two of the Trump environmental policy.