Lawsuit against Energy Department Dishwasher Restrictions Dismissed by Judge
The judge concluded that federal law means the restrictions can only be challenged with an appeals court.
The EPCA states that a challenger to a regulation “may … file a petition” with a U.S. appeals court.
That means the district courts do not have a role, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled.
He sided with government lawyers, who said that the law precludes district court jurisdiction.
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The Competitive Enterprise Institute had said appellate jurisdiction was “permissive, not mandatory.”
While it’s true that traditionally district courts review agency actions, that presumption “evaporates ‘when there is a specific statutory grant of jurisdiction to the court of appeals,’” Kacsmaryk said, quoting from an appeals court ruling in a separate case.
Some other statutes authorize concurrent review by district and appeals courts, but the EPCA’s plain text does not, he added later.
“When the EPCA confers jurisdiction to the district court, it does so for issues appropriate for that forum—namely, whether a state or local government in fact met its EPCA requirements,” the judge said. “But Plaintiffs challenge the underlying agency decisions themselves, which, as the foregoing authorities demonstrate, are more appropriate for appellate review in this limited EPCA context.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the DOE did not respond to requests for comment.
The new regulations imposed stricter water efficiency standards. A standard dishwasher under the regulations, for example, can use no more than 3.3 gallons of water per cycle.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit could still rule in favor of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
