Opinion ID: 807072
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Administrator shall promulgate a Federal

Text: implementation plan at any time within 2 years after the Administrator -- (A) finds that a State has failed to make a required submission . . . or (B) disapproves a State implementation plan submission in whole or in part; unless the State corrects the deficiency, and the Administrator approves the plan or plan revision, before the Administrator promulgates such Federal implementation plan. 42 U.S.C. § 7410(c)(1) (emphases added). EPA’s FIP obligation is therefore not triggered, without more, by a State’s mere 7 Notice the circularity in the court’s statement. The court says State petitioners’ “simultaneity” argument can be “[p]ut another way,” Op. at 58 n.34, as an argument that States had no section 110(a) SIP requirements until EPA quantified their emission reduction budgets. Under section 307(b)(1), that is exactly the argument that States were required to make in petitions for judicial review of the Final SIP Rules setting forth EPA’s section 110(a) interpretation. 15 failure to submit a SIP required by section 110(a), but instead by an explicit EPA Final Rule finding that the State either failed to submit a required SIP or an adequate SIP. A challenge to EPA’s interpretation of section 110(a) must therefore be brought as a petition for judicial review of those Final SIP Rules announcing that States failed to meet their section 110(a) “good neighbor” SIP obligations. See Med. Waste, 645 F.3d at 427. Under the plain terms of the CAA, EPA’s obligation (and authority) to promulgate a FIP is triggered by those Final SIP Rules, and the process by which EPA must promulgate a FIP is governed by section 110(c), not, as the court posits, by section 110(a). The court therefore, and not the dissent, does the conflating by turning what should be a challenge to EPA’s FIP authority under section 110(c) into a collateral attack on EPA’s interpretation of section 110(a) set forth in the prior Final SIP Rules. The plain text of section 110(c)(1) obligates EPA to promulgate a FIP “at any time” within two years of disapproving a SIP submission or finding a State failed to submit a SIP. 42 U.S.C. § 7410(c)(1). Moreover, nothing in section 110(c) requires EPA to reveal to States the content (i.e., the emission reduction budgets) it intends to include in its FIP prior to proposing a FIP. Although the CAA allows States to submit SIPs to “correct[] the deficiency,” they must do so “before” EPA’s promulgation of a FIP, which may occur “at any time” within two years. Id. The court thus rewrites section 110(c)(1)’s unambiguous grant of authority to EPA (and ultimate obligation of EPA) to promulgate a FIP at any time within the two year window to read: “unless but not until the State corrects the deficiency and the Administrator approves the [SIP] or [SIP] revision, before may the Administrator promulgates such [FIP].” “[A]s the Supreme Court has emphasized time and again, courts have no authority to rewrite the plain text of a statute.” Kay v. FCC, 525 16 F.3d 1277, 1279 (D.C. Cir. 2008). Because the CAA “means what it says,” EPA was required, after publishing disapprovals and findings of failure to submit SIPs, to promulgate FIPs within two years, and it was not required to wait for States first to submit SIPs. Landstar Express Am. v. Fed. Maritime Comm’n, 569 F.3d 493, 498 (D.C. Cir. 2009). The court’s attempt to ferret out an argument about “simultaneity” as a distinct challenge properly brought against the Transport Rule based on EPA’s interpretation of section 110(a) is thus a straw man for its endorsement of State petitioner’s collateral attack on EPA’s interpretation of section 110(a) in the Final SIP Rules. Its rewriting of section 110(c) is made all the more remarkable by its recognition that “we must apply and enforce the statute as it’s now written.” Op. at 8.