Supreme Court of the United States
EPA v. Calumet Shreveport Refining, L.L.C.
June 18, 2025605 U.S. 627
Summary
The Court held that each denial of an individual small-refinery exemption petition is a locally or regionally applicable EPA action, but that the denials here were based on determinations of nationwide scope or effect, placing review in the D. C. Circuit under the Clean Air Act. It vacated the Fifth Circuit’s judgment and remanded. Justice Gorsuch dissented, joined by Chief Justice Roberts; he agreed that the individual denials were locally applicable but would have read the Act’s substantive provisions to require regional-circuit venue and rejected the Court’s test for identifying nationwide determinations.
Holding
- How to identify the relevant EPA action and determine whether it is nationally or locally or regionally applicable.. The relevant action is each individual denial of a refinery’s exemption petition, and each denial is locally or regionally applicable because it applies only to that refinery.
- When a locally or regionally applicable EPA action is based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect.. The exception applies when a determination of nationwide scope or effect is the primary explanation for and driver of EPA’s action; courts assess that basis de novo.
- Whether EPA’s exemption denials were based on determinations of nationwide scope or effect.. EPA’s interpretation of disproportionate economic hardship and its RIN passthrough theory were nationwide determinations that formed the core basis for the denials, so the challenges belong in the D. C. Circuit.
Docket 23-1229
Cited authorities
- 40 C.F.R. § 80.1426(a)
- CA10
- CA11
- CA10
- 42 U.S.C. §7607
- 42 U.S.C. §7607
- 28 U.S.C. §1331
- 91 Stat. 776