Chicago, Denver, and New York City have joined a broad multistate coalition in filing a sweeping legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The cities are partnering with a large group of state attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania to contest the federal agency’s recent decision to dismantle greenhouse gas emissions standards for the power sector and its ongoing failure to enforce mandatory pollution requirements on existing gas-fired power plants.
The legal action, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, targets a series of aggressive regulatory rollbacks executed by the federal environmental agency under the Trump administration. Local and state leaders argue that dismantling these federal climate protections violates statutory obligations under the Clean Air Act, undermines public health, and exposes vulnerable communities to heightened environmental and climate risks.
Dive Insight: The EPA’s Sweep and the Legal Defense
The conflict centers on sweeping regulatory changes announced in September by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The agency finalized the repeal of most provisions within the 2004 Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units—though official documentation references the 2024 standards—and formally proposed rescinding every remaining greenhouse gas emissions standard governing the power sector.
In announcing the policy shift, Administrator Zeldin asserted that the EPA lacks the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants for the specific purpose of addressing global climate change. To justify the move, the agency pointed heavily to the Trump administration’s repeal of the foundational 2009 endangerment finding, alongside the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Loper Bright decision, which upended traditional frameworks of federal regulatory deference.
In its public announcement regarding the repeal, the agency went a step further, declaring that predictive climate models continue to demonstrate that greenhouse gas emissions originating from power plants exert no material impact on global climate change. This scientific stance forms the cornerstone of the federal government’s current deregulatory push, directly reversing decades of federal acknowledgement regarding the primary drivers of global warming.
A Unified Front of Cities and States Fight Back
In response to these federal actions, the legal coalition materialized quickly, bringing together a diverse array of municipal and state leaders. The City and County of Denver, the Pennsylvania governor, and the mayors of Chicago and New York City joined attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. Together, they filed both the lawsuit and a formal intent-to-sue notice in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Local leaders have pulled no punches in criticizing the federal government’s rationale, arguing that the rollback of environmental protections will do little to benefit average citizens while creating severe health and financial consequences.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston issued a sharp rebuke of the policy in a public statement following the filing. He argued that the president’s actions will fail to spark a genuine resurgence in American energy production, instead resulting in record profit margins for corporate polluters while leaving ordinary families to deal with dirtier air and stubbornly high utility bills. Johnston emphasized that the true cost of these regulatory rollbacks will be measured in public health deterioration, adding that local governments look forward to defending commonsense environmental protections in a court of law.
Addressing Statutory Failures and Environmental Injustice
Beyond challenging the elimination of existing standards, the legal coalition is targeting the EPA’s chronic inaction regarding stationary combustion turbines. In their formal intent-to-sue notice—a mandatory legal prerequisite required before private citizens or government entities can sue a federal agency for failing to perform a mandatory statutory duty—the coalition highlights the agency’s persistent refusal to promulgate emissions guidelines for existing stationary combustion sources.
The notice states that this multi-year failure has directly harmed states and local municipalities that have spent more than two decades demanding that the EPA fulfill its legal obligations under the law. Furthermore, the coalition notes that these regions have experienced, and will continue to experience, severe and catastrophic climate-related harms as a direct consequence of federal inaction.
A central pillar of the lawsuit focuses on the disproportionate human cost borne by marginalized populations. The coalition emphasizes that the federal government’s failure to regulate emissions directly harms overburdened frontline and fenceline communities. These neighborhoods are frequently chosen as the sites for existing gas-fired power plants, exposing local residents to concentrated levels of co-pollutants while leaving them distinctly vulnerable to the escalating threats posed by global climate change.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson underscored this human element in his own statement regarding the litigation. He affirmed that the city is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with municipal and state partners across the nation to leverage the legal system against the administration’s regulatory retreat. Johnson characterized the federal rollbacks as reckless and callous actions that inflict direct harm upon the most vulnerable members of society, declaring unequivocally that Chicago refuses to back down from the fight.
As the legal battle moves into the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the EPA has not yet responded to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit or the specific allegations leveled by the coalition of cities and states.
