The court holds that an electric utility violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) when it completed 11 construction activities that modified a coal-fired electric-generating facility without first calculating post-construction emissions and obtaining preconstruction CAA prevention of significant deteriorati...

The court holds that a local transportation control measure, adopted as part of California's state implementation plan to attain federal air quality standards in the San Francisco Bay Area, does not impose an enforceable obligation on the local transportation commission to increase public transit ri...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that certain aspects of local fleet rules do not escape preemption under CAA §209(a) simply because they address the purchase of vehicles rather than their manufacture or sale. The fleet rules prohibit the purchase or lease of vehicles by fleet operators that do not ...

The Sixth Circuit upheld EPA's redesignation of Cleveland, Ohio, from nonattainment to attainment for particulate matter under CAA §107(d)(3)(E). An environmental group argued that EPA illegally waived statutory requirements when it redesignated the area to attainment by not fully approving the...

A district court entered judgment for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) with respect to environmental groups’ claims that the TVA violated the CAA and the Tennessee SIP in its operation of a fossil fuel-fired electricity generating facility. The groups argued that two projects, the economiz...

The D.C. Circuit remanded an EPA rule that retroactively altered allowances for controlling the production, import, and export of hydrochlorofluorocarbons that had been allowed under prior regulations. A 2003 rule allowed both inter-pollutant and intercompany transfers of allowances, but in the 2010...

A district court held that an environmental group's claims against an electric company for violating PSD requirements before making major modifications to one of its plants are time barred, but it stayed final entry of the judgment pending the ruling of the Seventh Circuit in a similar case. PSD obl...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that the Clean Air Act (CAA) does not preempt certain provisions of local "fleet rules" requiring operators to meet specified emission standards or engine requirements, but reversed and remanded the court's refusal to consider whether the CAA preempt...

The Tenth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of Colorado's Clean Indoor Air Act. The Act bans smoking in indoor areas, but it expressly exempts from this general prohibition "airport smoking concessions" such as airport restaurants and bars. A coalition of tavern and bar owners filed suit challeng...

The Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction enjoining the California Air Resources Board from enforcing state regulations that limit emissions from the auxiliary diesel engines of ocean-going vessels within 24 miles of California's coast. Clean Air Act (CAA) §209(e)(2)(A) requires California to obta...