On Feb. 18, 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a final rule which revokes the agency’s 2009 ‘endangerment finding’ on greenhouse gas emissions. The endangerment finding was an interpretation of the Clean Air Act that found that greenhouse gases could be regulated as pollutants under the Act.
President Donald Trump (R) announced the decision and said that "under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called Endangerment Finding — a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers."
Former President Barack Obama (D) said that after revoking the finding “we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
What is the endangerment finding?
The endangerment finding is an interpretation of the Clean Air Act (CAA), a federal law which empowers the EPA to regulate air pollutants. In the 2007 case of Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, as a pollutant under the CAA. In 2009, the EPA published a finding that greenhouse gases were a danger to public health and welfare, and could therefore be regulated under Section 202(a) of the CAA. This finding was the basis for a number of subsequent regulations of greenhouse gas emissions.
Under Section 202(a), the EPA may regulate “any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines… which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” In the 2009 finding, the EPA asserted that “six greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations,” and “that the combined emissions of these greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas air pollution that endangers public health and welfare under CAA section 202(a).”
On August 1, 2025, the EPA published a proposed rule which would revoke this finding, arguing “that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns.” The EPA published the final version of this rule on Feb. 18, “rescinding the Administrator's 2009 findings of contribution and endangerment and repealing all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines to effectuate the best reading of Clean Air Act (CAA) section 202(a)(1).”
The Feb. 18 EPA rule argues that “that the Endangerment Finding and subsequent regulations exceeded the Agency's statutory authority under CAA section 202(a)(1),” and that they “rested on a profound misreading of the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.” The rule cited two recent major Supreme Court cases as part of this reasoning — West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022) and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024). In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court found that the EPA had exceeded its authority in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants under the CAA because the major questions doctrine required Congress to specifically grant authority for such a major policy rather than broadly delegating general authority. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the Court struck down the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to agency interpretations of statute, which compelled federal courts to defer to a federal agency's interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute that Congress delegated to the agency to administer.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said that the EPA was “following the law exactly as it is written and as Congress intended — not as others might wish it to be.” Daniel A. Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote that, in addition to the question of overturning judicial precedent from Massachusetts, the EPA's arguments amount "to a questionable basis for an agency charged with environmental protection to turn its back on a problem of this magnitude.”
What does repealing the endangerment finding mean for climate policy?
Because the 2009 endangerment finding served as the legal basis for federal greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, rescinding it reshapes how the federal government approaches climate regulation under the Clean Air Act.
In the Feb. 18 rule, the EPA rejected its earlier interpretation of Section 202(a)(1). The agency wrote, “The EPA determines that CAA section 202(a)(1) does not authorize the Agency to prescribe emission standards in response to global climate change concerns for multiple reasons.” The rule further states, “Upon reconsideration, the EPA now acknowledges that the Endangerment Finding and subsequent regulations exceeded the Agency's statutory authority under CAA section 202(a)(1).”
That interpretation removes Section 202(a)(1) as the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles on the grounds that those emissions contribute to global climate change. The repeal reverses the agency’s prior determination that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles trigger mandatory regulation under that provision.
The rule frames this shift as a correction of statutory interpretation rather than a change in scientific assessment.