## Facts

- EPA issued greenhouse-gas emissions standards for new light-duty vehicles and heavy-duty trucks under the Clean Air Act in coordinated rulemakings with NHTSA fuel-economy (CAFE) standards.
- Delta Construction Company, the California Construction Trucking Association, and related industry parties petitioned for review, asserting economic injury from increased vehicle purchase costs and alleging EPA failed to comply with an EPA-specific scientific review requirement.
- Plant Oil Powered Diesel Fuel Systems, Inc. (POP Diesel) petitioned for review, alleging the regulatory program disadvantaged its vegetable-oil engine conversion technology by emphasizing conventional efficiency improvements and not providing incentives for its approach.
- EPA moved to dismiss the petitions, arguing petitioners lacked Article III standing.
- Environmental organizations and certain states intervened in support of EPA.

## Issues

1. Whether the industry petitioners showed Article III standing to challenge EPA’s coordinated vehicle standards based on alleged increased vehicle costs, including causation and redressability given NHTSA’s independent standards.
2. Whether POP Diesel showed Article III standing based on alleged competitive and economic harms from the design of EPA’s vehicle standards, including injury-in-fact, traceability, and redressability.
3. Whether the court could reach the merits of petitioners’ statutory and Administrative Procedure Act challenges absent Article III standing.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit dismissed all petitions for review for lack of jurisdiction because petitioners failed to establish Article III standing.
- For the industry petitioners, the court held the alleged higher vehicle costs were not likely redressable by vacating EPA’s rules because NHTSA’s independent fuel-economy standards would remain in effect.
- The court concluded the asserted causal chain between EPA’s alleged procedural violation and petitioners’ economic injury was too attenuated given overlapping regulation by NHTSA.
- For POP Diesel, the court held the alleged harm was speculative and depended on intervening decisions by manufacturers, consumers, and other market actors, defeating traceability and redressability.
- The court did not address the merits of any statutory, procedural, or arbitrary-and-capricious claims.

## Legal Principles

- Article III standing requires a concrete and particularized injury-in-fact, a causal connection fairly traceable to the challenged action, and a likelihood that judicial relief will redress the injury.
- In challenges to coordinated or overlapping regulatory regimes, a petitioner must show that invalidating the challenged agency action would likely alleviate the alleged harm; independent parallel standards can defeat redressability.
- Competitive or market-based injury theories fail where asserted harm depends on speculative assumptions and intervening third-party choices, undermining traceability and redressability.
- Federal courts must dismiss petitions for review without reaching the merits when standing is not established.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit dismissed challenges to EPA’s coordinated vehicle greenhouse-gas standards because the petitioners could not show their economic injuries were fairly traceable to EPA’s actions or likely to be remedied by court action, particularly given NHTSA’s independent, continuing fuel-economy standards and the speculative nature of asserted competitive harms.


Delta Constr. Co. v. EPA, 783 F.3d 1291 (D.C. Cir. 2015)