February 18, 2026

EPA Endangerment Repeal Ignores Law and Science – We’ll See Them in Court

ELPC is stepping up to challenge EPA’s abandonment of its legal responsibilities to protect the American people’s health and well-being.

By Howard A. Learner, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director

Here’s what the Environmental Law & Policy Center is saying and doing as we file a lawsuit today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging the Trump EPA’s illegal and misguided repeal of the sound science-based federal greenhouse gases Endangerment Finding, and repeal of sensible clean car and clean truck standards. People in Midwest communities are already facing climate change realities of extreme heat, more intense storms, and rising health and insurance costs. ELPC is stepping up to challenge EPA’s abandonment of its legal responsibilities to protect the American people’s health and well-being.

EPA’s longstanding determinations that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contribute to air pollution that endangers public health have required, as a matter of law and sound policy under the Clean Air Act, the federal government to regulate GHG pollution from vehicles and other industrial sources since 2009.

The U.S. EPA’s recent actions trump political ideology over Congress’s laws, sound science, public health and common sense. When proposing to repeal the Endangerment Finding, the agency first relied on a cherry-picked, biased scientific assessment that ignored overwhelming peer-reviewed fact-based evidence of climate change realities and harms. EPA now continues to hide behind a flimsy legal argument, ignoring real-world climate change realities.

Here in the Midwest, the real-world impacts of climate change are impossible to ignore – extreme heat, derechos, and more intense and more damaging storms. By repealing the evidence-based Endangerment Finding, the Trump EPA is creating uncertainty for businesses and communities, leaving Americans exposed to worse human health threats and rising insurance costs. The Trump EPA is abandoning its core mission – protect public health and the environment for all Americans.

In 2019, the Environmental Law & Policy Center published a special climate change assessment by a team of 18 leading university and research scientists that examined the current and projected impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes and the region around the Great Lakes. In 2025, we published an updated assessment. Both can be found here: The Impacts of Climate Change on the Great Lakes.

EPA’s repeal of these important protections is a stark and legally unjustified departure from decades of scientific consensus and legal precedent, raising serious concerns about the nation’s ability to address the pollution causing climate change and to safeguard public health and our environment.

It is just wrong. 

That’s why today ELPC is filing a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit to challenge the Trump EPA’s unlawful repeal of the Endangerment Finding and to defend sound science-based policy.

The law is on our side, and we’ll see them in court.

Howard A. Learner,

Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director

Howard Learner is an experienced attorney serving as the Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. He is responsible for ELPC’s overall strategic leadership, policy direction, and financial platform.

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