Recent Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule revising standards for lead found in dust on floors, window sills, and in soil. Our amicus brief critiques the rule, which forgoes net beneficial options in favor of weaker standards that will cause significant harms to public health.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security finalized the “public charge” rule, which seeks to deny lawful permanent residency to immigrants who have participated in public assistance programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Section 8 housing voucher program. Multiple federal district courts have since enjoined the rule from taking effect and Policy Integrity filed amicus briefs supporting those injunctions on appeal. Our briefs explain how the Department failed to meaningfully assess many of the substantial social costs of the large-scale disenrollment from public assistance programs that will result from the rule, and also failed to identify any significant social benefits from the rule.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently finalized a rule that significantly reduces the penalties that automakers pay for violating the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. In reducing the penalty, NHTSA rolled back an adjustment that had been made to the penalty under the Inflation Act, a statute requiring agencies to adjust civil monetary penalties to account for decades of inflation. We submitted an amicus brief in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit focusing on NHTSA’s faulty economic justifications for the rule, arguing that this repeal was unlawful.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently finalized a rule that expands protections for healthcare workers who deny care based on moral or religious beliefs. We submitted amicus briefs in support of challenges to the rule filed by states, municipalities, medical organizations, and civil-rights advocates. Our argument details how HHS’s analysis of the rule’s economic impacts ignores significant costs while touting entirely speculative benefits. We submitted briefs to the Southern District of New York, Northern District of California, and the District of Maryland.

In April, district courts in Washington State, Oregon, and California blocked a Trump administration rule that makes harmful changes to the federal funding of women’s health services. Those decisions were recently appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We filed amicus briefs arguing that the preliminary injunctions should be affirmed.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently finalized a rule that expands protections for healthcare workers who deny care based on moral or religious beliefs. We submitted an amicus brief in support of challenges to the rule filed by states, municipalities, medical organizations, and civil-rights advocates. The brief details how HHS’s analysis of the rule’s economic impacts ignores significant costs while touting entirely speculative benefits.

Last year, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) repealed its Waste Prevention Rule, undoing crucial regulations that reduce natural gas waste from venting, flaring, and leaks. We submitted an amicus brief focusing on the problematic aspects of the repeal: BLM’s false understanding of its role in waste prevention and its faulty analysis of climate impacts.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently finalized the “Close-Out Rule,” a rule refusing to impose any additional reductions in interstate ozone air pollution under the Good Neighbor Provision of the Clean Air Act. We submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit explaining how EPA’s decision to not require pollution reductions is irrational and devoid of adequate analysis.

If constructed, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline Project would be responsible for greenhouse gas emissions resulting in over $1.3 billion per year of climate damages. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) analysis estimates the quantity of the project’s emissions but does not analyze the context, intensity, or significance of the incremental climate damages they will cause. We submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that explains how FERC’s failure to monetize the project’s climate damages using Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimates is arbitrary.

The Clean Air Act includes a Good Neighbor Provision, which requires states to prohibit their own sources of pollution from emitting in quantities that “contribute significantly” to another state’s inability to achieve national ambient air quality standards. When upwind states fail to abide by this requirement, the Act authorizes downwind states to petition the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for relief.

In 2018, EPA denied five such petitions filed by Maryland and Delaware, which sought tighter limits on ozone-forming emissions from power plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Maryland and Delaware, supported by other states and a coalition of environmental groups, have now challenged those denials in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In our amicus brief supporting the challenges, we focused on EPA’s erroneous claim that no further emission reductions at the specified plants would be cost-effective.