Press Release  AG Healey Fights Trump’s Last-Gasp Efforts to Undermine Environmental Protections

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has joined coalitions of attorneys general in filing nine lawsuits fighting President Trump’s illegal last-minute efforts to disregard science and roll back critical environmental regulations and protections that safeguard public health and the environment.

These recently filed lawsuits challenge “midnight” rules finalized in the last days of the Trump Administration to make it harder for the incoming Biden Administration to fight climate change, strengthen clean energy economies, and protect public health. The final rules were crafted to enrich the fossil fuel and other large industries while putting the country’s clean air and the global climate at risk in violation of federal law, including the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

“On his way out the door, President Trump and his climate change deniers and business cronies at the EPA and other agencies are illegally shoving through dangerous rules that will dirty our air and put the health of our residents at risk,” AG Healey said. “We’ve spent the last four years fighting this Administration’s illegal efforts to undermine long-effective environmental protections, and we are going to continue this critical fight to the very end.”

These lawsuits come on the heels of a major decision today by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in favor of AG Healey and a coalition of other states and cities in a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s illegal repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan, which sought to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions from the Nation’s power plants.

The nine lawsuits filed by AG Healey and state attorneys general across the country include:

• Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards: AG Healey joined a multistate lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) illegal decision not to strengthen the air quality standards for harmful ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog. Ozone is a dangerous pollutant that causes or aggravates asthma, bronchitis, lung-tissue damage, heart disease emphysema, and premature death. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to these health risks. In finalizing this rule, EPA ignored a wealth of scientific evidence showing that a more stringent ozone standard is necessary to adequately protect human health and the environment.
   
• Aircraft Greenhouse Gas Standards Rule: AG Healey joined a multistate lawsuit to challenge EPA’s final rule setting aircraft greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards at levels that will result in no emissions reductions. By adopting outdated standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2017, EPA has unlawfully allowed the aviation industry—long overdue for federal regulation of its GHG emissions, which states are prohibited from regulating—to continue to avoid meaningful measures to combat the climate crisis.
   
• New Source Review Project Emissions Accounting Rule: AG Healey joined a multistate lawsuit challenging EPA’s unlawful final rule that will allow factories, industrial boilers, power plants, and other emissions sources to avoid regulatory requirements to reduce emissions when they undertake “major modifications.”  
   
• Significant Contribution Threshold Rule: AG Healey joined a coalition of states and local governments in challenging EPA’s unlawful rule restricting its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate industries responsible for more than half of all GHG emissions from the Nation’s stationary sources, including emissions from the oil and gas industry. If the industry emits less than 3% of total U.S. GHG emissions, EPA’s rule illegally and irrationally asserts it cannot be regulated under the Clean Air Act. 
   
• Science Rule: AG Healey joined a multistate lawsuit challenging EPA’s misguided rule to limit EPA’s ability to rely on scientific evidence in its regulatory decisions if the underlying data are not publicly available.  Rather than promote transparency, the lawsuit argues, EPA’s final rule will unlawfully prevent the agency from relying on the latest, best available, and generally accepted science, including epidemiological studies undergirding our most important public health and environmental protections. 
   
• Air Cost-Benefit Rule: AG Healey joined a multistate coalition in filing a petition for review of EPA’s final air cost-benefit rule which, again under the guise of “increasing transparency,” negatively overhauls how the agency values public health and environmental protections in setting clean air regulations. In particular, the rule would undercount the harmful effects of carbon emissions that lead to climate change and distort the value of co-benefits, the often-substantial benefits of a standard that addresses more than one pollutant.
   
• Energy Efficiency: AG Healey joined a multistate coalition suing the Department of Energy in two cases challenging the current Administration’s failures to comply with the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) in rolling back energy efficiency requirements for clothes washers and dryers and providing a procedure for industry to avoid complying with energy efficiency standards in the future. The suits challenge the Administration’s unlawful rollbacks of standards that prevent enormous amounts of GHG emissions and save consumers money by reducing the amount of energy they use.
   
• “Once in, Always in” Repeal Rule: AG Healey joined a multistate lawsuit challenging EPA’s final rule that effectively repeals a decades-old policy, known as “Once In, Always In,” to allow “major sources” of toxic air pollutants to be able to reclassify as “area sources” and thereby increase their emissions of these hazardous air pollutants. 

Over the last four years, AG Healey has taken well over 200 actions against the Trump Administration to fight rollbacks of critical environmental protections and has won numerous victories over the federal government in these cases, such as the D.C. Circuit’s decision today vacating the Administration’s rollback of the Clean Power Plan.  In October, AG’s Office released a report, “Fighting for a Healthy Massachusetts: Stopping Illegal Federal Environmental Attacks & Rollbacks,” detailing these actions to protect Massachusetts’ residents and natural resources.

These cases are being handled by Assistant Attorneys General Carol Iancu, Andrew Goldberg, Ashley Gagnon, Matthew Ireland, Turner Smith, and Seth Schofield, as well as Special Assistant Attorneys General Megan Herzog and David Frankel, all of AG Healey’s Energy and Environment Bureau.

###