WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court has unanimously turned down the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to discard a 2024 rule that established tougher limits on fine particle pollution, also known as soot.
The three-judge panel’s decision is a blow to the Trump administration’s push to roll back regulations and its ongoing support for coal as an energy source. The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit keeps the stricter pollution standard in place, at least for the time being.
The Trump EPA had asked the court last year to strike down the Biden-era rule, claiming the agency’s previous leadership had overstepped its legal authority and failed to adequately weigh the financial burden the rule would place on affected businesses.
The court refused, with Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg writing in the decision that the agency’s arguments “lack merit.”
The ruling preserves an annual cap of 9 micrograms of fine particle pollution per cubic meter of air — a significant reduction from the previous standard of 12 micrograms, which had been in place for more than a decade. The rule requires states and counties to meet that cleaner air threshold over the coming years, targeting pollution from power plants, vehicles, factories, and wildfires.
The EPA’s push to abandon the rule came after 25 Republican-led states and numerous business organizations filed a lawsuit seeking to block it. A suit spearheaded by attorneys general from Kentucky and West Virginia argued the regulation would drive up costs for manufacturers, utility companies, and families, and could prevent new manufacturing facilities from being built.
When the Biden administration finalized the rule in 2024, officials said the tighter limits would prevent more than 800,000 cases of asthma symptoms, reduce hospital visits by 2,000, and avert 4,500 premature deaths each year.
An EPA spokeswoman said in November that the 2024 rule would cost “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to American citizens” and was not grounded in a thorough review of the available science. The agency said Friday it was taking time to review the court’s decision.
Environmental organizations praised the ruling as both a public health victory and a rebuke of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“Clean air is not a luxury. The 2024 soot standard is a critical advancement for public health, projected to save thousands of lives every year,” said Patrice Simms, vice president of healthy communities at Earthjustice, an environmental law organization. “Lee Zeldin’s EPA must stop catering to polluters and must instead fulfill its mission to protect public health,” Simms added.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said the delay in putting the 2024 rule into effect has left millions of Americans breathing unhealthy concentrations of soot pollution.
“The science has long been clear, and now the law is too. The EPA must stop stalling and deliver the clean air the Clean Air Act requires,” said Vijay Limaye, a climate and health scientist with the NRDC.
