A coalition of 25 cities, counties and states filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for repealing most of the Biden administration's greenhouse gas emissions requirements for American power plants, according to an article published October 2, 2026 in Utility Dive. The group also filed notice that it intends to sue the agency for not regulating greenhouse gas pollution from existing gas-fired plants, including "peaker" facilities that run during periods of high demand and are frequently sited in lower-income neighborhoods. The legal actions follow EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's September announcement that the agency had finalized repealing most provisions of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units and proposed eliminating every remaining greenhouse gas emissions standard for the power sector.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by attorneys general from 21 states and the District of Columbia, along with the mayors of Chicago and New York City, Pennsylvania's governor, and the City and County of Denver. The states include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Several state attorneys general and a representative from New York City's Mayor's Office of Climate & Environmental Justice testified at a virtual public hearing on the EPA's proposal to scrap greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants entirely, with the hearing continuing for a second day.
Zeldin stated that the agency lacks authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate power plant greenhouse gases for addressing climate change, pointing to the Trump administration's repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding and the U.S. Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision as justification. "Models continue to show that GHG emissions from power plants have no material impact on global climate change," the EPA said in announcing the repeal. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement that "the president's actions won't unleash American energy, but they will lead to record profits for polluters — all while our air gets dirtier and our bills stay just as high."
The coalition argues in its intent-to-sue notice that the EPA's failure to issue emission guidelines for existing stationary combustion turbines has damaged states and local governments that have demanded for more than two decades that the agency fulfill its legal obligations and have suffered catastrophic climate-related harms as a result. The notice emphasizes that the agency's inaction particularly harms overburdened frontline and fenceline communities, which often experience the worst impacts from co-pollutants released by existing gas plants disproportionately located in their neighborhoods and face distinct vulnerabilities to climate change threats. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city "is proudly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our partners across the country to use the legal system to tell the Trump administration that its rollbacks are unacceptable, that its actions recklessly and callously bring harm to the most vulnerable among us, and that Chicago won't back down."