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BALTIMORE, MD — Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today issued the following response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final rule rescinding the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which determined that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles contribute to air pollution that drives climate change and endangers public health and welfare.
“The EPA threw out fifteen years of settled science and Supreme Court precedent to let polluters poison our air and destabilize our climate. Our children and grandchildren will inherit worse floods and droughts, rising sea levels, and more toxic air – all because the Trump administration is prioritizing corporate profits over people’s health,” said Attorney General Brown. “We will use every tool at our disposal to protect our climate and reverse this terrible decision.”
The 2009 Endangerment Finding was the direct result of the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which confirmed EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. In response to that opinion and after years of scientific review, EPA confirmed in 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles contribute to air pollution that harms public health and welfare in numerous ways. The agency then set standards to limit motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA’s rescission of the Endangerment Finding rests on the flawed assertion—soundly rejected by the Supreme Court—that it lacks legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and ignores longstanding scientific evidence that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The rule also eliminates all existing and future federal greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, violating the agency’s legal obligations and fundamental responsibility to protect public health and welfare from environmental harm.
In the fall of 2025, AG Brown joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general and seven counties and cities in submitting two comment letters urging the EPA to abandon the proposal, arguing that it would violate settled law and clear Supreme Court precedent, disregard clear scientific consensus, endanger hundreds of millions of Americans—particularly communities disproportionately burdened by environmental harms—and cause unprecedented disruption to the regulatory landscape with consequences for residents, industries, natural resources, and public investments.
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