EPA is weakening the Clean Air Act’s smog program one state at a time. CATF is fighting back.

Over the last year, CATF has challenged U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to weaken clean air protections, including the Clean Air Act’s smog program. The program protects more than 115 million Americans living in areas with unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone, which can damage the lungs and heart, trigger hospitalizations, and contribute to premature death, particularly among children, older adults, and people with asthma.

Despite those stakes, EPA is working to weaken the smog program. CATF and partners recently submitted comments opposing EPA’s national proposal that would allow areas with worsening ozone pollution to delay cleaning up their air. But EPA’s most significant smog rollbacks have received less attention: the agency has increasingly used decisions involving individual states to advance new legal interpretations that weaken the program nationwide. Two tactics EPA is using are: (1) loosening the rules for redesignating polluted areas and (2) reconsidering legally required reclassifications that trigger stronger pollution controls.

EPA’s new redesignation theory lets polluted areas off the hook

EPA has recently adopted a new interpretation of the Clean Air Act’s ozone redesignation provision. When an area is redesignated from “nonattainment” to “attainment” for the national smog standard, key clean air protections no longer apply. But redesignation is allowed only after the area has implemented all applicable pollution-control measures.

In EPA’s redesignation of the Cleveland nonattainment area, the agency now interprets the Clean Air Act to allow redesignation even if the area has not adopted all applicable requirements. Ohio, like some other states, has missed deadlines to submit required ozone implementation plans, and EPA’s new theory is that it can simply extend those past-due deadlines until after redesignation—thus rendering those requirements not “applicable.” This legal gamesmanship seeks to evade a recent court decision reaffirming that an area must adopt all applicable requirements before redesignation.

Clevelanders deserve clean air, not to be the pawn in EPA’s latest ploy to weaken the smog program. That’s why CATF, representing the Ohio Environmental Council, and partners have filed a lawsuit to stop EPA’s illegal redesignation of Cleveland in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. On the same day, CATF and partners submitted comments opposing EPA’s proposed redesignation of the Detroit area, where EPA has applied the same flawed legal interpretation.

EPA’s reconsideration of ozone reclassifications delay stronger smog controls

EPA has also been reconsidering state-specific decisions reclassifying ozone nonattainment areas. Under the Act, EPA must periodically determine, based on monitored air quality data, whether an area attained the national ozone standard. Areas that fail are “bumped up” to a higher classification with additional pollution-control requirements. This graduated classification scheme is the ozone program’s core, ensuring areas with persistent smog problems take action to protect public health. EPA’s recent reconsiderations of state-specific smog reclassifications include Missouri and Utah.

More recently, EPA announced it would reconsider the reclassification of Wisconsin nonattainment areas, even though the agency had previously been defending it before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. This reconsideration prolongs public exposure to harmful smog because EPA has no deadline to act. The next attainment deadline is August 3, 2027, and EPA’s last-minute reconsideration makes progress before that date increasingly unlikely. The delay is troubling because smog in Wisconsin’s nonattainment areas has worsened in recent years, as Clean Wisconsin recently explained to EPA.

But CATF, on behalf of Clean Wisconsin and Sierra Club recently asked the Seventh Circuit for permission to intervene and defend the reclassification. The parties also asked the court to allow the reclassification to take immediate effect and permanently uphold the reclassification so that Wisconsin must begin implementing its much-needed, smog-reducing requirements. The Clean Air Act clearly compelled reclassification based on air quality; thus, there is nothing of substance EPA can reconsider. The health and well-being of Wisconsinites is paramount under the Clean Air Act, and CATF will not allow EPA’s rollbacks to proceed without a fight.

EPA’s state-specific actions may receive less attention than its national rollbacks, but their consequences reach far beyond Cleveland, Detroit, and Wisconsin. By loosening redesignation requirements and delaying mandatory reclassifications, EPA is undermining its obligation to protect human health and the environment and the Clean Air Act’s basic responsibility to protect and improve the nation’s air quality. Communities breathing unhealthy air deserve stronger protections, not more excuses for delay.