Oklahoma v. EPA, Docket No. 23-1067

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At the heart of this case is a fine point of law: whether the EPA’s decisions to reject Oklahoma’s and Utah’s air-quality plans should be treated as separate, local actions or lumped together into one big, national rule. The Supreme Court said these are individual, state-by-state decisions, based on detailed, local facts—and so they belong in the regional courts, not in Washington’s D.C. Circuit. By breaking up what the EPA calls an “omnibus” rule into its pieces, the justices made clear that each plan needs its own fresh look. They also ruled that because the agency focused on state-specific data rather than on a broad, countrywide impact, the exception that would force review in D.C. doesn’t apply. Stay tuned after the break to find out what this means for future challenges to environmental rules and how it could shape the battle over clean air.

Summary of the Case

In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strengthened the air quality standard for ground-level ozone. Under the Clean Air Act's "Good Neighbor" provision, states must submit plans showing how they'll prevent their emissions from affecting neighboring states' ability to meet these standards. The EPA reviewed plans from 21 states, disapproved them, and published all these disapprovals in a single document. In this document, the EPA stated that any challenges should be filed in the D.C. Circuit Court.

Several states, including Oklahoma and Utah, along with industry groups, sued in their regional circuit courts instead. When the Tenth Circuit transferred Oklahoma and Utah's challenges to the D.C. Circuit, the Supreme Court stepped in to resolve a key question: Should challenges to EPA's disapprovals of state plans be heard in the D.C. Circuit or in the appropriate regional circuit courts?

Opinion of the Court

Justice Thomas, writing for a six-Justice majority, applied a two-step framework from a recent case (EPA v. Calumet). First, courts must identify whether the EPA's action is "nationally applicable" or just "locally or regionally applicable." Second, if the action is only locally or regionally applicable, courts must determine if there's an exception because the action is "based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect."

The Court held that each state plan disapproval is a separate action under the law. The Clean Air Act specifically treats actions on state implementation plans as locally or regionally applicable. The EPA's decision to bundle 21 disapprovals into one document doesn't transform them into a single nationwide action.

The Court also rejected the EPA's argument that these disapprovals fell within the "nationwide scope or effect" exception. Although the EPA used some common approaches across all reviews, these were just tools in what remained state-specific analyses. No single nationwide determination drove all the disapprovals. Therefore, challenges to the Oklahoma and Utah disapprovals must proceed in their regional circuit courts, not the D.C. Circuit.

Separate Opinions

Justice Gorsuch, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, agreed with the outcome but disagreed with the majority's approach. He would have relied strictly on the text of the Clean Air Act without adopting the two-step framework. Gorsuch believed the statute clearly indicates that state plan denials should be reviewed in regional courts unless the law explicitly says otherwise.

No Justice dissented. Justice Alito did not participate in the case.

Understanding Venue Rules in Clean Air Act Challenges

The Clean Air Act creates specific rules about where EPA actions can be challenged in court. It draws a clear line between "nationally applicable" actions (which can only be challenged in the D.C. Circuit) and "locally or regionally applicable" actions (which must be challenged in the regional circuit court where the affected state is located).

There's an exception: if a local or regional action is "based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect," and the EPA officially declares this in its publication, then the case can go to the D.C. Circuit instead.

This structure ensures that challenges are directed to the appropriate court based on the nature of the EPA's action, not on how the EPA packages its decisions. The law recognizes that some regional decisions might have national implications, but it requires the EPA to explicitly state when a decision is primarily driven by factors that apply uniformly across all states.

This approach balances the Clean Air Act's design as a cooperative federal-state program with the occasional need for uniform national regulation. In this case, the Court determined that the EPA's disapprovals of state plans remained separate state-specific actions, despite being published together, and therefore challenges should be heard in the regional circuit courts.