RS20860 -- The Supreme Court Upholds EPA Standard- Setting Under the Clean Air Act: Whitman v. AmericanTrucking Ass'ns
March 28, 2001

	Background

NAAQSs lie at the very heart of the Clean Air Act. Circuit's majority opinion was its embrace of a long-moribund constitutional principle knownas the "nondelegation doctrine." The CAA imposes restrictions on nonattainment areas over and above those that the Act imposesgenerally. The Court found that EPA could not ignore Subpart 2 entirely, as it had done. Likewise, EPA had the better argument when it came to inclusion of costs in the setting of NAAQSs. Some commentatorshave noted the Court's refusal in American Trucking to defer to EPA's interpretation of the CAA onozone standard implementation, and speculated that thelegacy of the decision may lie in its signalling a desire by the Court to lessen the degree of judicial deference toagency decisionmaking. Developing an implementation plan that embodies a "reasonable interpretation"of the Act's nonattainment implementation provisions for the revised ozoneNAAQS, as the Court mandated, is not an easy task.
On February 27, 2001, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, achallenge to EPA's promulgation in 1997 of revised national ambient air quality standards for ozone and particulatesunder the Clean Air Act. On the broaderissues, the Court ruled that (1) the Act's provisions governing the setting of primary (health-protective) ambientstandards did not transgress the "nondelegationdoctrine," a moribund constitutional principle that the court below had resurrected, and (2) the Act bars EPA fromconsidering implementation costs when it setsprimary national ambient standards. On a narrow issue, the Court held that EPA had not been justified, inpromulgating its ozone implementation plan, inapplying only the Act's nonattainment-area subpart of general application, rather than a subpart specific to ozonenonattainment. As a result, the Court chargedthe agency with developing a "reasonable interpretation" accommodating both subparts. Such accommodation islikely to prove a difficult task, however, andalmost certainly once adopted will generate further legal challenges.