By Jonathan Stempel
July 21 (Reuters) – The Trump administration was sued on Tuesday by 18 Democratic-led states, Washington, D.C. and New York City over a new federal rule they say would harm the climate by giving companies more time to stop using dangerous hydrofluorocarbons in commercial refrigeration equipment.
The petition filed with the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. challenges an Environmental Protection Agency decision to roll back deadlines for companies to substitute climate-friendly refrigerants for hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
Opponents said the rule would boost harmful greenhouse gas emissions and undo part of the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, which called for an 85% reduction in HFCs by 2036.
President Donald Trump signed that law in December 2020, less than one month before his first White House term ended. The “Phasedown of Hydrofluorocarbons” rule is scheduled to take effect on July 27.
In a statement, the EPA said its longstanding practice is not to comment on pending litigation. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is also named in the petition.
The Trump administration has scaled back a variety of environmental initiatives and standards, including by reducing support for clean energy and repealing an Obama administration-era scientific finding that climate change threatens public health.
HFCs are often used in air conditioning, large refrigerators and freezers found in supermarkets, and refrigeration equipment used to manufacture semiconductors.
RULE SAID TO THREATEN CLIMATE PROGRESS
States said one provision of the EPA rule lets supermarkets, convenience stores and bakeries continue until 2032 to use remote condensing systems whose refrigerants carry more than nine times the previously permitted global warming potential.
“The EPA’s new rule would undo the progress we’ve made, and penalize companies that have complied with the law,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a webcast announcing the lawsuit.
Bonta also accused Trump of “again putting industry profit over the health and well-being of American people and the future of our planet.”
The attorneys general of California, Massachusetts and Washington state lead the petition.
They were joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C., as well as New York City.
In a regulatory filing, the EPA said the rule would advance its efforts to reduce the cost of living for American families, and not force companies to use technologies that make food and semiconductors cost more.
It also said the deregulation push would further Trump’s January 31, 2025 executive order calling for “unleashing prosperity through deregulation.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York)
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