Clean Air Act Survives Federalism Challenges

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The D.C. Circuit this week upheld a key authority of the EPA for enforcing the Clean Air Act against federalism and congressional authority challenges. The per curiam ruling rejected other challenges to EPA action, as well, and means that the case is dismissed. The ruling leaves intact the EPA's authority to designate geographic areas as noncompliant with the Clean Air Act and to take certain enforcement actions.

The federalism challenge in the case, Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality v. EPA, sought to exploit the plurality's ruling in NFIB, where the Court held that Obamacare's Medicaid expansion couldn't condition a state's entire Medicaid grant on the ACA's Medicaid expansion. But the court rejected that argument, easily distinguishing Medicaid expansion and the EPA's actions here, as described below.

The case tested EPA's authority to designate certain geographic areas as noncompliant with the Clean Air Act's National Ambient Air Quality Standards. A variety of plaintiffs lodged complaints, but only two, Wise County, Texas, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, raised constitutional claims. They argued that the EPA's designation of Wise County as a nonattainment area violated the Tenth Amendment and due process, and exceeded congressional authority under the Commerce Clause.

The court rejected these arguments. The court ruled that the Clean Air Act "authorizes the EPA to promulgate and administer a federal implementation plan of its own if the State fails to submit an adequate state implementation plan." The court said that's not commandeering, because the federal government isn't requiring the state or state officers to implement the federal plan.

The court also ruled that the Clean Air Act's sanctions for noncompliance--re-direction of a portion of federal highway funds to federal programs that would improve air quality--were not unduly coercive under NFIB. That's because they don't come close to the size of a state's federal Medicaid grant, and because it wasn't a new program that came as a surprise to the states. Indeed, the condition has been on the books (and states have taken advantage of it) for decades.

The court said that the Clean Air Act's delegation of authority to the EPA to designate areas as noncompliant is well within Congress's Commerce Clause authority. The court said that dirty air blows across state lines, causing a substantial effect on interstate commerce, and that the activities in Wise County that led to the dirty air themselves have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Finally, the court rejected a due process claim that the EPA administrator for Region 6 was biased. The court said that the administrator's past professional activities and statements did not rise to the level of an "unalterably closed mind" or an inability or unwillingness "to rationally consider arguments."

As mentioned, the court rejected other arguments against the EPA's authority, too, mostly under the APA.