Recent Projects

Certain coal companies and states have asked the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of EPA’s authority by prohibiting the agency's use of flexible compliance mechanisms—like intersource emissions trading and production shifting—in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. The challengers rely in part on the major questions doctrine, a little-used canon of interpretation that petitioners claim bars EPA from issuing costly and controversial rules.

In this amicus brief, we explain that petitioners’ application of the major questions doctrine would expand the canon beyond either recognition or workability, stretching a doctrine meant to apply only in rare cases to cover many different regulations advanced by administrations of both parties. We further explain that, contrary to petitioners’ assertions as part of their major questions analysis, EPA has frequently relied on flexible compliance mechanisms under numerous Clean Air Act provisions. Finally, our brief argues that Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act is an integral statutory provision for regulating air pollution and not an afterthought as petitioners contend.

The Supreme Court will hear the case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, later this term. The case seeks to revive the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, a deregulatory action promulgated under the Trump administration that was vacated last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The Bureau of Land Management's approval of over 300 drilling permits in New Mexico would allow for an increase in production resulting in more than $1.6 billion in climate damages. We filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit criticizing the agency's analysis of the project, which inappropriately minimizes these climate impacts through comparison to nationwide totals. We explain that this approach does not facilitate a rational analysis of the project's climate effects.

Policy Integrity's Economics Director Peter Howard joined climate scientists and economic experts in written testimony to the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) about the significance of excessive greenhouse gas emissions that would be generated if Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel siting permit is approved. Howard explained that “the Proposed Project will generate a present value of $41 billion (in 2020 dollars) or more in net monetized climate costs from 2027 to 2070 as compared to the no-action alternative – in other words, the Proposed Project will generate average annual monetized climate costs of approximately $1 billion each year over this period, plus significant unmonetized climate effects and other unquantified pollution costs to human health and the environment.”

We filed a brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York supporting a challenge to the Department of Education’s replacement for a 2016 regulation known as the Borrower Defense Rule. The replacement rule makes it much harder for student borrowers who have been defrauded by for-profit colleges to get their loans discharged. We later filed a brief in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals after SDNY upheld the rule.

We filed an amicus brief explaining how NHTSA and EPA's decision to finalize a rule that, even under their own analysis, will be net-costly to society, is arbitrary and capricious. 

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers published the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which considerably restricts the waters and wetlands that are federally protected under the Clean Water Act. We filed briefs in the Northern District of California and District of South Carolina focusing on the agencies’ economic analysis, which the agencies use to obscure the rule’s anticipated harms. We later filed in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Northern District of New York, the District of Massachusetts, and the District of Maryland.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently finalized revisions to New Source Performance Standards for methane and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from the oil and natural gas sector. We filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, focusing on EPA's flawed legal and economic justifications for the rule. 

The expansion of the Bull Mountains Mine project in Montana would allow for an increase in coal production likely resulting in more than $9 billion in climate damages. We filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit criticizing the Office of Surface Mining’s analysis of the project, which fails to monetize climate impacts using the social cost of carbon. We explain that the project’s full economic benefit is, at most, just one-third of its expected climate costs. 

In 2017, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) repealed an Obama-era rule that tightens environmental regulations for fracking on public lands. We filed an amicus brief detailing BLM’s irrational analysis of the repeal, which erases the rule’s significant net benefits and flouts longstanding standard practices.

Last fall, three federal courts—in the Southern District of the New York, the Northern District of California, and the Eastern District of Washington—vacated the Department of Health and Human Services’ conscience rule, which sought to expand healthcare providers’ rights to deny care on religious or moral grounds. In amicus briefs supporting the vacatur, Policy Integrity criticized HHS for, among other things, failing to consider the new policy’s likely health costs for women and LGBT individuals.