On behalf of the States of Kansas and Nebraska, Boyden Gray & Associates filed the final briefs yesterday in a challenge to EPA’s new vehicular emissions model, MOVES2014. The States are required to use the computer model when they prepare State Implementation Plans for EPA’s air quality standards, but EPA did not give notice and accept comments on the model before finalizing it, as the agency has done with past models. The States ask the Court to vacate the current rule so that EPA may correct fundamental defects in EPA’s methodology and the model’s inputs before promulgating a new one after notice and an opportunity for comment.
In their reply brief, the States respond to EPA’s argument that the States lack standing to challenge the rule mandating use of the model and EPA’s argument that the rule is merely a policy statement and therefore exempt from the notice-and-comment requirement.
The States are joined by the Energy Future Coalition and Urban Air Initiative as co-petitioners. The case is Kansas v. EPA, No. 14-1268, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
See also BG&A Files States’ Challenge to EPA’s Vehicular Emissions Model (July 2, 2015)