Supreme Court Will Not Block Two Vital Climate and Clean Air Protections

(Washington, D.C. – October 4, 2024) The U.S. Supreme Court today denied requests from the court’s shadow docket for emergency stays of two EPA actions that protect the people across the country from dangerous climate and air pollution. 

The Court’s decisions mean the methane standards for the oil and gas sector, and a vital update to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, will remain in place while challenges to them are considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Environmental Defense Fund is a formal party before the Court participating in these cases.

“EPA’s vital protections addressing oil and gas methane and air toxics from coal plants are helping ensure healthier, longer lives for millions of people across the country,” said Vickie Patton, EDF General Counsel. “EPA is carrying out our nation’s clean air laws to protect our children and our communities from dangerous air pollution. The recent extreme weather events that have caused death and devastation across large parts of our nation are a stark reminder that we urgently need solutions to address pollution. We need to work together as a nation, and to end this senseless cycle of meritless and obstructionist litigation.”

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is responsible for about a third of the warming we are experiencing today. Reducing methane is vital for addressing the climate crisis that threatens all of us, and there are highly cost-effective and proven solutions available – many already being used through state and private sector actions.  

EPA adopted protective limits on methane pollution from new and existing oil and gas sources under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act earlier this year. EPA’s standards will reduce millions of tons of climate-damaging methane and other toxic, smog-forming pollution from oil and gas leaks, venting and flaring – giving people cleaner, healthier air to breathe and helping protect them from the severe damages of climate change. EPA estimates that the methane protections will prevent hundreds of premature deaths and many more illnesses; in one year alone, they are expected to prevent 97,000 cases of asthma symptoms. 

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a successful clean air program that limits dangerous smokestack pollution from coal-fired power plants. The plants emit mercury, which is linked to brain damage in children and heart disease in adults, and cancer-causing arsenic, chromium and nickel. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were first adopted more than a decade ago, and since then they have saved more than 160,000 lives – at a fraction of what power companies initially claimed it would cost. 

EPA strengthened the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in April to make them more protective in addressing cancer-causing toxics, require continuous monitoring systems for key toxic pollutants, and close a loophole that allowed power plants that burned one type of especially dirty coal – lignite coal – to emit three times more mercury than other plants.

In both cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – which will hear both cases – denied requests for emergency stays. In both cases, opponents of EPA’s actions then asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency stay from its shadow docket – before any court could fully hear the cases and weigh all the evidence. 

Today the Supreme Court deniedboth those requests.

EDF is participating in these cases with coalitions of public health groups, environmental organizations, and community-based organizations that are helping to defend both EPA standards in the D.C. Circuit and opposed emergency stay requests at the Supreme Court.