In the News

Writing in The Hill, Bethany A. Davis Noll and Richard Revesz note that the scientific and evidentiary basis legally required for the Trump environmental regulations is largely absent. These legal deficiencies have led some experts to predict that the seeming revolution in regulatory policy will come a cropper, as federal judges on the D.C. Circuit and then the Supreme Court throw out the shoddy work. Courts to the rescue!

“It would be hard for the Trump administration to say [the Clean Power Plan] is a net bad for the American people; the total benefits were significantly more than the cost,” said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. Revesz noted that Trump’s EPA was only able to legally justify rolling back the rule by “mangling” the Clean Power Plan’s direct greenhouse gas benefits and its additional co-benefits of cutting pollutants like fine particles.

It’s difficult to say whether the Trump administration can legally rescind the California waiver. A report New York University School of Law released Wednesday argued the EPA lacks the legal authority to withdraw the waiver. No president has ever tried. And, according to David Driesen, an environmental law professor at Syracuse University, arguing that the state’s CO2 rules don’t meet the standards set out in the Clean Air Act is “just not a plausible argument.”

It’s difficult to say whether the Trump administration can legally rescind the California waiver. A report New York University School of Law released Wednesday argued the EPA lacks the legal authority to withdraw the waiver. No president has ever tried. And, according to David Driesen, an environmental law professor at Syracuse University, arguing that the state’s CO2 rules don’t meet the standards set out in the Clean Air Act is “just not a plausible argument.”

An essay by scholars at the New York University School of Law argues that the EPA lacks legal authority to revoke a state’s waiver before it expires. California’s waiver from the Obama administration, negotiated in 2013, is due to last until 2026.

There are legitimate policy options that could increase the resilience of the nation’s electricity grid, but subsidizing coal and nuclear plants are not among them, says a new report by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

On July 26, Wheeler withdrew a “no action assurance” Pruitt signed his last day on the job that had promised the EPA would not enforce limits on so-called “glider trucks” that are retrofitted with rebuilt diesel engines lacking modern emissions controls. Wheeler’s pivot came eight days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a stay blocking Pruitt’s hands-off policy toward glider truck pollution. Lawsuits previously prompted the EPA to reverse course on policies around ozone pollution, landfill emissions and pesticides under Pruitt too, noted Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director at the New York University School of Law Institute for Policy Integrity.

Prof. Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University, said Mr. Wheeler was “trying to be more careful and less sloppy” than his former boss. “By taking time to improve the quality of the legal justifications, Wheeler may ensure that E.P.A. won’t be subject to losing on certain types of policies,” Professor Revesz said.

Now that Scott Pruitt’s scandal-ridden tenure has ended, there are those who might like to think that the Environmental Protection Agency will be able to move past the distractions and roll back major environmental regulations successfully. But Pruitt’s time as EPA’s administrator was marked by more than just scandals. He also lost in court repeatedly when his deregulatory efforts were challenged.

Now that Scott Pruitt’s scandal-ridden tenure has ended, there are those who might like to think that the Environmental Protection Agency will be able to move past the distractions and roll back major environmental regulations successfully. But Pruitt’s time as EPA’s administrator was marked by more than just scandals. He also lost in court repeatedly when his deregulatory efforts were challenged.

His successor will face similar obstacles because the policies that the Trump administration is trying to undo brought enormous benefits to the American people. Acknowledging the truth — that the deregulatory actions will cause significant harms and are being undertaken merely to please political supporters — is not a viable political or legal strategy.