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Result: N.C. federal court can't excise parts of EPA report
Jump to full article: The National Law Journal, 2003-01-06
Author: David Horrigan / Special to The National Law Journal
Intro: In what it called a case raising "substantial" questions about a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on secondhand cigarette smoke, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 11 held that the agency's issuance of the report, which labeled the smoke a carcinogen, was not a final, court-reviewable, action.
As a result, the 4th Circuit concluded that a North Carolina federal court erred when it vacated the parts of the report containing that finding. . .
As part of its two-pronged analysis, the court held that to be final and reviewable, the agency action must be one "from which legal consequences will flow." The court held that the EPA's report created no legal rights or obligations and had no direct regulatory effect on the tobacco interests.
Gregory Foote, the senior EPA attorney on the case, agreed: "The test under finality law requires a direct legal impact, not just a real-world impact."
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