EPA’s Endangerment Finding Repeal Stands on Shaky Foundations
Months before overturning the scientific determination behind federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin restated his plans for the agency at an auto dealership in Indiana, saying, “The Trump EPA is proposing to end 16 years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers.”
The reality is that the Trump EPA has abdicated responsibility for the agency’s quintessential mandate of protecting human health and the environment. The EPA has elected not to contest climate science, instead relying on legal arguments that appear to be tweaked versions of what the Supreme Court rejected in its landmark 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA.
“To state the obvious, this White House doesn’t give a damn about clean air or clean water,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) said in an interview with the Prospect. “The American people generally like being able to swim in rivers without getting scabies; they like being able to breathe air … behind a school bus and not get asthma, not have premature fatalities.”
If Zeldin is to be believed, rolling back the endangerment finding will restore consumer choice and deliver regulatory relief for entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry. But gutting the backbone of federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions may not be as business-friendly as it seems. Neither is gutting the Biden administration’s EV subsidies that automakers had made big investments predicated on persisting. It might render the whole industry a global also-ran.
In September 2025, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce declared that it “strongly supports EPA’s current efforts to revoke or revise” both the finding and tailpipe emissions standards. Although the Chamber lauded EPA’s “alternative rationales” for rescinding existing regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, it emphasized the need for “durable” rulemaking capable of withstanding potential litigation challenging the agency’s actions. In other words, regulatory rollbacks are no good for industry if they are done so clumsily that they are unlikely to hold up in court.
The oil and gas industry also prefers predictable regulation to regulatory uncertainty. According to Daniel Farber, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, fossil fuel companies want “weak regulations, but they want regulations.” He said repealing the finding “does take some of the wind out of their sails,” largely because it could undercut the industry’s ability to argue in favor of federal preemption.
“To state the obvious, this White House doesn’t give a damn about clean air or clean water.”
Rep. Sean Casten
In the absence of a robust regulatory framework at the federal level, plaintiffs involved in climate liability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies may find themselves in a better position to contend that state tort law cannot be displaced by federal law. Still, fossil fuel companies could try to make the case that since climate policy is a matter of Congress, state tort law cannot apply, though that argument seems comparatively weaker than the one they have continued to rely on in cases like Suncor Energy v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, which is now destined for the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, in February, a coalition of health and environmental groups sued the EPA over its repeal of the finding and concurrent elimination of motor vehicle emissions standards. The outcome of the litigation will determine whether the agency’s rescissions are sustained or struck down. It’s a big gamble for Trump, one that Farber believes will likely be reversed by the courts. But what would it take to reinstate the finding if it is indeed eliminated?
To answer this question, it helps to first understand which legal theories the Trump administration is using to justify what Zeldin has called “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
“The administration has several different legal theories, and if they won on some of those theories, it would be very hard, maybe impossible, for a future president to do anything,” Farber told the Prospect. “On the other hand, some of their other theories seem to involve things that could be fixed, or that a later administration could argue differently.”
Consider the Trump EPA’s theory on air pollution. Under the Clean Air Act, the agency has the authority to regulate air pollutants produced by vehicles. Redefining the phrase “air pollutant” to only include substances that cause harm through direct exposure, as the Trump administration is trying to do, could exclude greenhouse gas emissions from the EPA’s regulatory purview.
The second and perhaps most impactful theory involves the major questions doctrine, which holds that federal agencies lack the authority to resolve issues of “vast economic and political significance.” Settled interpretations of the doctrine maintain that Congress has this authority.
The courts are expected to consider whether federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions involves a major question, one that requires unambiguous statutory authority. As Farber observed in Legal Planet, ruling in favor of this argument “would have a drastic effect, eliminating regulation of vehicles and stationary sources under the Clean Air Act, as well as climate regulations under other statutes.” Such a decision could clear the way for EPA to start “holding all climate regulations suspect under the major questions doctrine,” Farber writes. (The elimination of all federal emission standards could paradoxically make it easier for states like California to reinstate their emissions limits, though that would likely result in an uneven regulatory patchwork.)
Conversely, the Trump EPA’s other theories seem to be less constraining. Farber argues a future administration could still take corrective action if the courts determine that the EPA improperly treated the six greenhouse gases covered by the finding as a single category; motor vehicle emissions are not significant enough to be regulated (a tough pill to swallow given that transportation remains the nation’s largest source of emissions); or that the agency cannot legally regulate vehicle emissions without congressional authorization. “Congress would be entirely free to reinstate [the finding] or take other steps to give power to EPA on climate change regulation,” Farber said.
More from James Baratta: Public power could offer a way out of electricity’s affordability crisis.One way to give the agency that power is by reforming the Supreme Court, which is where the coalition’s lawsuit is expected to end up. If the reactionary Court majority keeps inventing dubious legal doctrines disallowing environmental protection, its powers could be trimmed. For his part, Casten, the Illinois representative, has introduced legislation to limit the high court’s original jurisdiction, or cases that can be filed directly in the Supreme Court rather than starting in lower courts. Although Congress cannot eliminate the high court’s original jurisdiction, it has the power to reform how that jurisdiction operates in practice under Article III of the Constitution.
“For the courts to rule that the endangerment finding no longer applies, it seems to me you’d either have to argue that the very plain text of the Clean Air Act and all of the rules that created the EPA as passed by Congress don’t apply, which would be essentially a power grab,” Casten told the Prospect. “That’s a constitutional crisis in addition to an environmental crisis.”
If the endangerment finding underpins federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, the Clean Air Act is the glue that holds it together. Some say this regulation could be strengthened with some bipartisan super glue. Jody Freeman, a law professor at Harvard University and former counselor for energy and climate change during the Obama administration, is one of them.
“The Clean Air Act is the bedrock of U.S. climate regulation, but it cannot do the job alone. Addressing climate change requires tools to mitigate emissions, spur clean energy adoption, and manage the impacts already underway. The EPA’s effort to repeal the endangerment finding is unlikely to survive legal challenge,” Freeman wrote in Yale Environment 360 this week. “But regardless, we should be planning, developing, and building bipartisan support now for effective climate strategies that Congress and the states can take up when a window opens.”
Trump has already opened the door to runaway pollution with his administration’s policy of American energy dominance, and by delaying the implementation and enforcement of methane rules aimed at limiting leaking, venting, and flaring.
“They’re letting industry get away with this stuff,” Casten said. “These are irreversible changes.”
The climate crisis isn’t going away, and overturning the scientific determination behind federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will not change that.
“It’s just hard to be going backwards on completely settled science, and in a completely settled view that we want a robust private sector. We also want to make sure that the private sector behaves in ways that don’t shift permanent health and welfare costs onto the general public,” Casten told the Prospect. “That’s a political bargain that we’ve settled on pretty happily for 30, 40 years. Why are we undoing that?”
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