Environmental groups are re-upping pressure on federal judges to throw out a stopgap compliance waiver for the coke industry — even though EPA now plans to scrap it.
“Industry and EPA jointly schemed to unlawfully eliminate compliance obligations for several months,” lawyers for the Sierra Club and six other groups told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a Tuesday filing.
“Accordingly, the Court should vacate this unlawful action, denying Industry the benefits of that illegal bargain and making clear to EPA that it cannot render the procedural requirements of the Clean Air Act of ‘“no use,’” they added.
The litigation is emerging as an early test of the Trump administration’s repeated resort to a procedural gambit known as an “interim final rule” that avoids the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement to provide the public with advance notice and the chance to comment.
