Attorney General Gentner Drummond welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear Oklahoma's case against the Biden Administration over the rejection of the state's ozone emissions plan, dubbed the "Good Neighbor" plan. Oklahoma's Official Government website reported that the matter escalated when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dismissed Oklahoma’s state implementation plan (SIP) designed to meet Clean Air Act criteria for reducing ozone pollution.
The conflict started when Drummond filed a federal lawsuit in March 2023 after the EPA's disapproval, the litigation was later transferred from the Tenth Circuit to the D.C. Circuit in February, and the Supreme Court has now agreed to look into the conflict particularly addressing the venue issue, after the Tenth Circuit's ruling diverged from other circuits such as the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth on the same matter. Drummond describes the EPA's refusal to accept Oklahoma's proposal and the imposition of a federal plan as an unconstitutional overreach, “Instead of working with Oklahoma to make whatever modifications the EPA claimed were necessary, the Biden Administration chose to burden the state with an unwieldy and costly one-size-fits-all plan. The EPA ignored the expertise of Oklahoma’s Department of Environmental Quality, all at the expense of state sovereignty,” Drummond stated, criticizing the federal agency for not recognizing the input from Oklahoma’s Department of Environmental Quality and undermining state sovereignty, according to the same news release.
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality had developed the "Good Neighbor" plan specifically to address interstate air pollution and ensure compliance with the federal Clean Air Act's guidelines related to ozone level management. The EPA, by rejecting this plan, has proposed a federal implementation strategy instead, which would apply more stringent emissions controls on a variety of sources, including power plants that rely on fossil fuels.
The implications of the Supreme Court's forthcoming decision could reverberate beyond Oklahoma, potentially affecting the regulatory power dynamic between state environmental agencies and the federal government; 25 states, including Oklahoma, face having to adapt to the federal mandates outlined by the EPA's implementation plan which demands adherence to emission reduction tactics with a broad brush approach that does not account for the individual environmental strategies states like Oklahoma have already put in place to tackle the problem on their terms.
