Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23a349_0813.pdf
Page Number: 32.0

10 

OHIO v. EPA 

BARRETT, J., dissenting 

comment  by  characterizing  it  as  a  warning  about  what 
might happen “[i]f the FIP did not wind up applying to all 
23 States” and responding to the concern that a “different 
set of States might mean that the ‘knee in the curve’ might 
shift”  and  change  the  cost-effective  “emissions-control 
measures.”  Ante, at 7.  But those words are the Court’s, not 
the commenter’s. 
  The commenter’s actual objection was to EPA’s sequenc-
ing of its actions—proposing a FIP before it finalized its SIP 
disapprovals.  The commenter titled this section “EPA Step 
Two Screening is Premised on the Premature Disapproval 
of 19 Upwind States[’] Good Neighbor SIPs.”  Air Steward-
ship  Comments  13  (boldface  omitted).    And  the  relevant 
sentence reads in full: 

“The proposed FIP essentially prejudges the outcome of 
those pending SIP actions and, in the event EPA takes 
a different action on those SIPs than contemplated in 
this proposal, it would be required to conduct a new as-
sessment  and  modeling  of  contribution  and  subject 
those findings to public comment.”  Id., at 14. 

This sentence says nothing about what would be required if 
after EPA finalizes its SIP disapprovals and issues a final 
FIP, some States drop out of the plan.  Nor does it suggest 
that  the  plan’s  cost-effectiveness  thresholds  or  emissions 
controls  would  change  with  a  different  number  of  States.  
Nor is it clear what the comment means by its bare refer-
ence to  a  “new  assessment  and modeling of  contribution”: 
Would  EPA  be  required  to  perform  a  new  evaluation  of 
which upwind States cause pollution in downwind States?  
A  new  analysis  of  how  much  pollution  each  source  must 
eliminate?  A new assessment of the plan’s impact on down-
wind States? 
  It  is  therefore  difficult  to  see  how  this  comment  raised 
with “reasonable specificity” the objection that the removal 
of some States from the final plan would invalidate EPA’s