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WASHINGTON (CN) — A coalition of health and environmental organizations sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its decision to reverse the landmark scientific conclusion that carbon dioxide pollution endangers human health, which served as the basis for wide swaths of climate regulations.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the rollback last week along with the elimination of rules to cut vehicle emissions, calling it the “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding had been the foundation of the nation’s efforts to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act and has repeatedly been upheld by federal courts and the last three presidents, including Trump during his first term. However, it has been a key target of the president’s during his second term, and he celebrated Zeldin’s decision at the White House by asserting any negative consequences of the finding were “all dead, gone, over.”
Led by the American Public Health Association, the coalition filed the petition in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to directly challenge the agency action. The coalition is made up of 17 organizations, including the American Lung Association, Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Air Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists and others.
David Pettit, attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, slammed the administration’s decision in a statement, calling the rollbacks based on “political poppycock, not science or law.”
“We’re suing to stop Trump from torching our kids’ future in favor of a monster handout to oil companies,” Pettit said. “Nobody but Big Oil profits from Trump trashing climate science and making cars and trucks guzzle and pollute more. Consumers will pay more to fill up, and our skies and oceans will fill up with more pollution.”
In a statement, Public Citizen attorney Adina Rosenbaum slammed the decision as the agency abandoning its responsibility to the public.
“The repeal of the EPA’s endangerment finding is illegal, and if allowed to stand, it will have devastating impacts on public health and a livable climate for decades,” Rosenbaum said.
The 2009 finding stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision in *Massachusetts v. EPA,*which determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are unambiguously air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and instructed the EPA to decide if the pollution endangers human health.
Public Citizen argues the Trump administration’s rationale for the rollback were a rehashing of legal arguments the Supreme Court considered and rejected in the 2007 case.
Further, the EPA’s decision to eliminate all carbon emission standards from vehicles will only harm taxpayers, Public Citizen argued, after a set of 2024 standards showed would save drivers of new cars $6,000 over their vehicle’s lifetime.
“The EPA’s own analysis found that eliminating the vehicle standards will increase gas prices and be a net negative for the economy,” Public Citizen said.
Zeldin said the rollback would save taxpayers over $1.3 trillion.
“The Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans,” Zeldin said. “Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated. The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning commonsense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American Dream.”
Specifically, the agency argues that the additional decisions in West Virginia v. EPA, Michigan v. EPA and Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA each emphasized that “statutes have a single, best meaning fixed at the time of enactment.”
The rollback is just the latest effort by the Trump administration to gut environmental regulations.
In March 2025, Zeldin announced the EPA would undertake 31 actions to reconsider climate regulations, including rules for power plants, the oil and gas industry, coal-fired power plants, coal ash programs, and wastewater regulations for coal plants. Zeldin formally proposed the reversal in July 2025.
The effort would also end the “good neighbor" rule meant to reduce cross-state pollution, which the Supreme Court paused in June 2024.
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