New York v. EPA

After President Biden signed a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act that disapproved the Trump administration's rule repealing significant portions of the new source performance standards for the oil and gas sectors, the federal district court for the District of Columbia accepted the parties’ proposal that the parties submit a joint status report regarding how they wished to proceed after EPA issued a proposed rule for the emission guidelines.

In a lawsuit seeking to compel EPA to establish methane emissions guidelines for existing oil and natural gas sources, the federal district court for the District of Columbia denied pending motions to dismiss and for summary judgment without prejudice and directed the parties to file a joint status report by April 9 advising on how they wish to proceed. The Trump administration sought to dismiss the lawsuit after EPA withdrew methane standards for new and modified sources in August 2020—a rule now under review by the Biden-Harris administration.

EPA asked the federal district court for the District of Columbia to dismiss as moot a lawsuit brought in 2018 by New York, other states, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. to compel EPA to issue guidelines for regulation of methane emissions from existing sources in the oil and natural gas sector. EPA contended that it no longer had authority or a duty to issue such guidelines because it had rescinded new source performance standards for methane emissions from the sector. EPA’s rescission of the methane standards for new sources has been <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/california-v-wheeler-2/">challenged</a> in the D.C. Circuit.

After EPA issued a final rule rescinding methane new source performance standards (NSPS) for the oil and natural gas sector, EPA sought the dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to compel it to issue guidelines for the regulation of methane emissions for existing sources in the sector. EPA argued that the case was prudentially moot because EPA no longer had the authority or duty to issue the guidelines. EPA further argued that it had not unreasonably delayed preparation of the methane guidelines because EPA had been conducting a review of the NSPS pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order 13783 and knew that development of the guidelines for existing sources would likely have been futile prior to completion of that review.

New York, 13 other states, the City of Chicago, and the District of Columbia filed an action in federal district court in the District of Columbia alleging that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had failed to comply with its nondiscretionary duty under the Clean Air Act to establish guidelines for limiting methane emissions from existing sources in the oil and natural gas sector. The plaintiffs asserted that EPA’s failure to publish such guidelines constituted agency action unreasonably delayed and asked the court to order EPA to propose and promulgate emissions guidelines.