Federal appellate judges ought to scotch EPA’s surprise bid to scrap a lifesaving air pollution standard and instead render a decision on the underlying legal challenges, Democratic-leaning states and public health advocates said in a two-pronged attack against the agency Tuesday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “should deny EPA’s irregular and deeply flawed motion” to vacate the soot exposure standard strengthened last year, argued the American Lung Association and other groups in their filing.
Joining them in a separate submission were Democratic attorneys general for California, Michigan and more than a dozen other states as well as Washington who deemed EPA’s motion “procedurally improper.”
The case “has been fully briefed and argued for a year, and nothing has happened since that could affect this court’s analysis,” the submission says. “Circuit rules generally bar dispositive motions at this late hour.”
