A dispute about EPA’s denial of a handful of petroleum refineries’ requests for biofuel-blending exemptions is national in scope and should be decided in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Supreme Court said Wednesday.
In a 7-2 ruling that sided with EPA, the high court ruled that a case brought by Calumet Shreveport Refining challenging the denial meets the definition of “nationwide scope or effect,” even though the agency’s action applied to just a few specific refineries in different judicial circuits.
At issue are the exemptions EPA grants from biofuel blending mandates in the renewable fuel standard. Calumet petitioned the agency for an exemption based on economic hardship, saying that the cost of meeting the requirement would bring the company financial harm.
The agency denied them as part of a much bigger batch of refusals in 2022, and Calumet sued in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
