Attorney General Dan Rayfield today sued the Trump Administration for scrapping federal limits on greenhouse gas pollution from many of the country’s largest power plants. Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed rules requiring coal- and gas-fired power plants to cut their emissions. That decision opens the door to more pollution, which means hotter summers, stronger storms, more flooding, and more wildfire smoke.
“Oregonians know what a changing climate looks like. We’ve lived through the heat dome and summers where the smoke was so thick our kids couldn’t play outside,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “Pollution doesn’t stop at state lines, and power plants are one of the biggest sources of it. The law requires EPA to do something about that. Instead, the Trump Administration is letting the biggest polluters off the hook and leaving families to pay the price.”
The lawsuit asks the court to throw out the repeal and put the protections back in place. Oregon is also putting EPA on notice that it intends to sue over the agency’s long-running failure to limit pollution from existing natural gas power plants.
The rules EPA repealed – adopted in 2024 – required many of the nation’s largest power plants to reduce the carbon pollution they release. Power plants produce about a quarter of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. Rather than hold them accountable, the Trump Administration wiped out limits for most coal- and gas-fired plants and has proposed ending power plant emission rules altogether.
More carbon pollution means more frequent and more intense heat waves, which are especially dangerous for children, older adults, and outdoor workers. It also means stronger storms and heavier flooding that damage homes, businesses, and roads, and more wildfire smoke that makes the air unsafe to breathe. Pollution from these plants can also worsen asthma, heart disease, and other serious illnesses, and it hits low-income communities hardest. And when extreme weather strikes, state and local governments are left to cover billions of dollars in recovery costs.
The states argue EPA broke the law by throwing out these limits without seriously considering other options or accounting for the real health and climate costs of more pollution. Because EPA failed to properly calculate what the repeal will cost the public, the states say the decision was arbitrary and capricious under federal law.
Separately, the states today notified EPA that they intend to sue over its failure to limit greenhouse gas pollution from many existing gas-fired power plants. These include “peaker” plants, which fire up when electricity demand is high and are often located in low-income communities and communities of color that already carry more than their share of pollution. EPA set standards for new gas plants more than a decade ago but has never done the same for existing ones, as the Clean Air Act requires.
Attorney General Rayfield filed this lawsuit alongside the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, along with the Governor of Pennsylvania, the Mayors of New York City and Chicago, and the City and County of Denver.