California v. EPA

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a district court should have granted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) request for modification of an injunction requiring EPA to issue a federal plan for implementation of emission guidelines for municipal landfills by November 2019. The emission guidelines—adopted in August 2016—were intended to reduce emissions of landfill gas and its components, including methane, from existing landfills. The Ninth Circuit held that because EPA, after the district court injunction, issued final rules that extended EPA’s deadline for issuing the federal plan, the law that formed the basis of the district court’s injunction had changed, and the district court abused its discretion by refusing to modify the injunction “even after its legal basis has evaporated.” The Ninth Circuit was not persuaded by the plaintiff states’ argument that “precedent requires a broad, fact-intensive inquiry into whether altering an injunction is equitable, even if the legal duty underlying the injunction has disappeared.” The Ninth Circuit also found that modification of the injunction due to EPA’s rulemaking action did not threaten separation of powers. The court wrote that ultimately it saw “a greater threat to the separation of powers by allowing courts to pick and choose what law governs the executive branch’s ongoing duties.”

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