Justices Suggest Flexible Rule for Where to Bring EPA Suits (1)

The US Supreme Court considered where industry groups and states can challenge EPA actions, suggesting the justices might come to different outcomes depending on the actions challenged.

At the heart of arguments in two different disputes on Tuesday was a statute that generally steers cases with local impact to federal circuit courts and those with national implications to the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The question for the justices is what happens when the action has both local and national effects.

The EPA argues in the cases out of Louisiana and Oklahoma challenging agency actions under the Clean Air Act that it made nationwide determinations that essentially resolved the otherwise local issues. As Justice Elena Kagan put it, “one thing was driving all of these decisions across the country.”

Arguing for the EPA, Justice Department attorney Malcolm Stewart said that’s exactly the kind of case that Congress wanted to go to the D.C. Circuit to avoid inconsistent results in the regional courts. The “actions at issue here resolved a total of 105 exemption petitions filed by refineries in 18 different states within eight judicial circuits,” Stewart said.

Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out that venue determinations are supposed to be “easy,” given that they happen at the beginning of a dispute before a court looks at the underlying merits. If the proper venue turns on what Gorsuch called the EPA’s “core” reasoning, “how is a litigant supposed to figure that out?” he asked.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pushed back.

“We’ve had a lot of talk about how it’s important for venue rules to be clear,” she said. But given that the “EPA made very clear this was going to apply nationwide,” Barrett wondered why it wasn’t obvious that the D.C. Circuit was the proper court to bring the case. “Why wouldn’t there be clarity when you have that kind of national determination?”

Moreover, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she can understand the concern for simple venue rules. “But it appears that Congress did not share that concern with respect to this statute because it’s very complicated,” Jackson said.

Ultimately the statute seemed to point the justices in two directions, as the court is considering the same venue question in the two cases.

In one, EPA v. Calumet Shreveport Refining, LLC, several justices seemed inclined to say that refineries seeking an exemption from renewable fuel standards must go to the D.C. Circuit, because national considerations predominated the agency’s decisions.

But in Oklahoma v. EPA, many justices seemed to think that challenges to state plans to deal with air pollution should go to the regional circuits, since the local considerations would ultimately decide the issue.

Kagan said she had a “pretty strong intuition” about both the cases. “And one goes one way and one goes the other way.”

It’s the second time this term the justices considered so-called forum shopping.

In a case the justices considered in January, Food and Drug Administration v. R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., the justices were skeptical of government arguments that the court should step in and curb where e-cigarette manufacturers can sue.

This time around, it’s industry groups and states who say the EPA is the one engaged in forum shopping.

Troutman Pepper attorney Misha Tseytlin, who represents one of the group’s challenging the EPA’s actions, accused the government of “venue manipulation.” The EPA essentially says it “can always get into the D.C. Circuit,” by either packaging its decisions altogether or pointing to some general reasoning, Tseytlin said.

Stewart pushed back on the idea that the EPA could get a better decision in the D.C. Circuit than in the other circuits.

“I’ve always bemused in these papers by references to the D.C. Circuit as a hometown court for EPA because if location in D.C. meant that the D.C. Circuit is a hometown court, then this Court would be a hometown court for EPA,” Stewart said. “I’ve never had that perception.”

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority in recent terms has struck down a number of EPA actions, including a decision from earlier this term in City and County of San Francisco v. EPA.

The cases are EPA v. Calumet Shreveport Refining, LLC, U.S., No. 23-1229, argued 3/25/25 and Oklahoma v. EPA, U.S., No. 23-1068, argued 3/25/25.