A federal appeals court has found that EPA was wrong to reject Mississippi’s plan to meet a 2015 federal standard for ozone pollution.
The Tuesday ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals simultaneously rejected requests from Texas and Louisiana — as well as energy industry groups in those states — to toss out EPA’s disapproval of their respective state implementation plans, or SIPs.
In the case of Mississippi’s SIP, the court found that EPA violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it based its disapproval on the state’s failure to use modeling that was not available at the time of the state’s submission.
“[E]ven assuming that EPA is not forbidden from using updated data, that does not explain the agency’s choice to use that data in an outcome-determinative manner to disapprove Mississippi’s SIP,” wrote Judge Priscilla Richman, who led the court’s unanimous opinion. “The agency’s disapproval of Mississippi’s SIP on this record was arbitrary and capricious.”
