The D.C. Circuit releases opinions on Tuesdays and Fridays. We read them all so you don’t have to. On Tuesday (Aug. 21), the court issued two opinions:
Utility Solid Waste Activities Group v. Environmental Protection Agency. In 2015, the EPA passed a final rule regulating coal residuals—AKA sludge and muck from power plants that gets stored in landfills or similar structures. The residuals can have “catastrophic” consequences for human and environmental health. The rule provoked the ire of environmentalists and industry groups alike, who both challenged various provisions. In a per curiam opinion from Judges Henderson, Millett, and Pillard, the court reached several holdings. It dismissed the industry group’s challenges, including one regarding the EPA’s statutory authority. It vacated two of the EPA’s rules related to surface impoundments (kind of like smaller, shallower landfills) and what type of lining they were required to have in the soil to prevent sludge toxins from reaching drinking-water sources. And it held as arbitrary and capricious the EPA’s exemption of “legacy ponds” (inactive surface impoundments at inactive power plants) from regulation even though they often pose “the greatest risks to human health and the environment.”
Lewis v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. When Delta Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2005, it stopped contributing to its pilots’ pension plan, leaving a large deficit of unfunded benefits. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which was established by federal law to distribute payments to workers after a pension plan terminates with insufficient assets, began making payments to Delta’s pilots according to a list of statutory priorities. Nearly 1,700 pilots or their beneficiaries sued the corporation, alleging various problems in how it allocated the available money. They said the corporation’s actions allowed it to reap “massive investment returns” from the pension fund’s assets, and they sought to have those investment gains disgorged and given to the pilots. In an opinion by Judge Griffith (joined by Judges Pillard and Williams), the court held that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act does not allow the pilots to recover gains in the value of the pension fund’s assets that occurred after the plan was terminated. The relevant provision of the act assigns any post-termination gains or losses to the corporation itself.
