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Court Challenges to the EPA's Endangerment Finding: A Summary

By Chip Knappenberger -- June 13, 2011

One big difference between Congressional mandates and regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is that if you don’t like what the EPA is doing, as they say on The People’s Court, “you can take ‘em to court.” (The other big difference, of course, is that if Congress takes action the members must explain their votes to their constituency).

In the case of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Clean Air Act (the authority under which EPA is acting to restrict such emission) explicitly states that the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals has exclusive jurisdiction over final action taken by the EPA’s Administrator.

And since the EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has issued her final action on the matter—finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare and therefore should be regulated—multiple challenges to that action have been made by parties unhappy with that decision.…