Environmental — Court Reverses Coal Company Clean Air Win

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Murray Energy Corp. v. Adm’r of the Environmental Protection Agency (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-149-17, 17 pp.) (Floyd, J.) No. 16-2432, June 29, 2017; USDC at Wheeling, W.Va. (Bailey, J.) 4th Cir.

Holding: A district court did not have jurisdiction to review the Environmental Protection Agency’s compliance with the Clean Air Act‘s Section 321(a) directive to continuously evaluate the potential employment impact of CAA administration and enforcement, in this suit filed by a coal company; the 4th Circuit vacates the district court judgments and remands with instructions to dismiss the suit for want of jurisdiction.

Review Mechanism

In 1977, after extensive public debate about the effects of the Clean Air Act’s environmental rules on employment, Congress enacted Section 321 of the CAA as a mechanism for reviewing those effects. At issue in this case is § 321(a) of the CAA, which directs the EPA to continuously evaluate the potential employment impact of CAA administration and enforcement.

In 2014, plaintiff Murray Energy Corporation filed this suit against the EPA, alleging a failure to comply with § 321(a). Murray requested an injunction ordering the EPA to conduct § 321(a) evaluations and prohibiting the EPA from engaging in certain regulatory activities until it had conducted such evaluations.

The EPA later moved for summary judgment, submitting 53 documents to prove the agency’s compliance with § 321(a). The documents – which the agency conceded had not been prepared explicitly for the purpose of § 321(a) compliance – included regulatory impact analyses, economic impact analyses, white papers and other reports. At the close of discovery the EPA renewed its summary judgment motion, submitting additional documents and arguing again that Murray’s suit was not judicially cognizable and Murray lacked standing to sue.

The district court granted summary judgment for Murray. The court read § 321(a) as obligating the EPA to assess the actual, site-specific employment effects of CAA implementation, and said the submitted documents did not satisfy this requirement. Before the district court had resolved the issue of an appropriate remedy, Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition and related non-governmental organizations moved to intervene under Fed. R. Civ. P. 24 in support of the EPA, and to prevent § 321(a) from being used to stay or impede certain CAA regulations.

The district court ordered the EPA to conduct an evaluation identifying facilities that are at risk of closure or reductions in employment because of the EPA’s coal-related regulatory activities under the CAA, the past employment ramifications of those activities and the impact of CAA-related employment losses and shifts on families and communities. The court denied as moot Mon Valley’s motion to intervene. This court consolidated appeals by Mon Valley and EPA.

No Jurisdiction

We hold that the district court erred in concluding that it could adjudicate Murray’s suit pursuant to § 304(a)(2). That statute authorizes suit to correct a failure of the EPA administrator to perform any act or duty under the CAA which is not discretionary with the administrator. We have construed this statute narrowly by confining its scope to the enforcement of legally required acts or duties of a specific and discrete nature that precludes broad agency discretion.

The evaluations required under § 321(a) are not confined to a discrete time period, but instead are to be conducted on a continuing basis. The statute establishes no start-dates, deadlines or any other time-related instructions to guide the EPA’s continuous evaluation efforts. The EPA is left with considerable discretion in managing its § 321(a) duty. The agency gets to decide how to collect a broad set of employment impact data, how to judge and examine the extensive data and how to manage these tasks on an ongoing basis. A court is ill-equipped to supervise this continuous, complex process.

We hold that § 304(a)(2) does not authorize the instant suit by Murray against the EPA, and that the district court thus lacked jurisdiction over the suit. We vacate the district court judgments insofar as they impact the EPA, and remand this matter to the district court with instructions that it dismiss Murray’s suit for want of jurisdiction. In light of this disposition, we decline to address the EPA’s challenges to the district court’s standing, merits and remedial rulings.

We conclude that Mon Valley’s appeal is moot and must be dismissed.

Vacated in part and remanded with instructions to dismiss; and dismissed in part.