Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers v. EPA

After the Supreme Court denied certiorari in which petitioners sought review of the D.C. Circuit’s decision in 2012 in <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/grocery-manufacturers-association-v-epa/">Grocery Manufacturers Association v. EPA</a>, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a petition for review of an EPA <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-07-25/pdf/2011-16459.pdf">rule</a> requiring gas stations to label pumps that dispense gasoline that contains more than 10% ethanol. Citing Grocery Manufacturers Association v. EPA, the court said in an unpublished judgment that the petitioners—the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Engine Products Group (EPG)—once again lacked standing. The court said that API had not provided evidence that any of its members sold or planned to sell gasoline containing 15% ethanol (E15) and that API therefore failed to show risk of injury adequate for standing. The court said EPG—which argued that E15 would damage products sold by its members for which E10 (gasoline containing 10% ethanol) was suitable—had failed to provide evidence connecting sales of E15 under the challenged regulation to injuries that EPG members were likely to suffer. The court also said that EPG had alleged only a conjectural or hypothetical injury when it argued that EPA’s denial of its rulemaking petition asking EPA to mandate the continued sale of E10 would force consumers to use the product-damaging E15 “for want of adequate E10 supplies.”

Petitioners in this proceeding challenge EPA’s rule requiring gas stations to label pumps that dispense gasoline that contains more than 10 percent ethanol. The D.C. Circuit granted a motion to hold the proceedings in abeyance pending the disposition of Grocery Manufacturers Association v. EPA, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers v. EPA, and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers v. EPA by the U.S. Supreme Court. Parties in those three proceedings challenged EPA’s decision to allow vehicles from model years 2001 forward to use gasoline with up to 15-percent ethanol content; the D.C. Circuit dismissed the challenges for lack of standing. The parties have petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the D.C. Circuit’s decision.