The U.S. Court of Appeals or the District of Columbia has
recently issued two important rulings on the Clean Air Act in
particular and administrative law in general: California
Communities Against Toxics, et al., v. EPA and Murray
Energy Corporation v. EPA.
The Battle of the Memos: Seitz Makes Way for Wehrum
In the California Communities case, decided on August
20, 2019, the court held, in a 2 to 1 decision, that a petition to
review a change in EPA policy announced in an agency memorandum
which reversed an agency policy announced nearly 25 years ago in
another agency memo must be rejected because the memo at issue was
not a "final agency action" subject to the Administrative
Procedure Act (APA). In 1995, the "Seitz Memo," which
interpreted Section 112 of the Clean Air Act and addresses the
regulation and control of hazardous air pollutants from stationary
sources, stated that once a source of toxic emissions is classified
as "major," the facility remains subject
