In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 244 S.Ct. 2244 (2024), the general breadth and scope of agency decision-making has been called into question. In its recent decision, Huntsman Petrochemical LLC v. EPA, No. 23-1045, 2024 WL 3763355 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 13, 2024), the D.C. Circuit has made it clear that where statutory interpretation is not implicated, the Court will continue to afford EPA’s conclusions involving technical expertise a significant degree of deference. While neither the parties nor the Court attempted to address or reference Loper Bright, the Court articulated a clear standard applicable to agency actions involving statistical and modeling analyses: the Court will examine each step of an agency’s analysis to satisfy themselves that the agency has not “departed from a rational course.” Only where a statistical model “bears no rational relationship to the characteristics of data to which it was applied” will agency action be deemed arbitrary and capricious. Accordingly, regulated entities should be aware that the concept of deference lives on when challenging agency decision-making, even in the wake of the fall of Chevron Deference. Read More »

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This entry was authored by MGKF Summer Associate Ryan Raynor

Next term, the United States Supreme Court will decide the extent to which federal agencies must consider environmental impacts beyond their control in performing environmental reviews. On June 24, 2024, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition and the Uinta Basin Railway, LLC to determine whether the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) requires a federal agency conducting an environmental impact statement (“EIS”) to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority. Eagle Cnty., Colorado v. Surface Transportation Bd., 82 F.4th 1152, 1179 (D.C. Cir. 2023), cert. granted sub nom. Seven Cnty. Coalition v. Eagle Cnty., Co, 2024 WL 3089539 (U.S. June 24, 2024). Read More »

Share | Email| Comments|  Topics: Energy, FERC, Greenhouse Gas, Natural Gas, NEPA, Oil and Gas, Pipelines, Railroad, United States Supreme Court