BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Sides with San Francisco and Curbs EPA Power

On 4 March 2025, the Supreme Court sided with the city of San Francisco in a challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) attempts to regulate sewage discharge into the Pacific Ocean. The ruling restricts the EPA's ability to regulate offshore pollution and could impact water pollution controls nationwide.

The original lawsuit, City and County of San Francisco, California v. Environmental Protection Agency, created a unique alliance between San Francisco, a city known for its progressive environmental policies, and oil and mining groups in California. The plaintiffs argued that the EPA's water pollution standards were vague and unenforceable. San Francisco officials contended that the agency's imprecise standards made it impossible for them to know when they were in compliance with their wastewater permit. In a separate but similar case concerning wastewater discharge into San Francisco Bay, the city is already facing $313 million in fines and an estimated $10.6 billion in upgrades to meet regulatory requirements.

The EPA argued that the Clean Water Act (CWA) authorizes the agency to impose generic prohibitions because the EPA lacked the information necessary to develop more specific guidelines. Representing the EPA in front of the Supreme Court, Assistant Solicitor General Frederick Liu said, “I want to be clear about the sort of information that we're missing that made it impossible for us to impose anything other than these generic limitations … That's the information that we've been lacking for the past 10 years and that we asked San Francisco to provide as part of the long-term control update. Without that information, we're basically flying blind as to how we're going to tell exactly what San Francisco should do to protect water quality.” However, the city disputed Liu's claim.

The Court's Decision

In the end, the Supreme Court sided with San Francisco, determining that the EPA can impose specific discharge limits but cannot hold municipalities responsible for broader water quality violations beyond the scope of their permits. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh joining the full opinion. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined most of the majority opinion.

“When a permit contains such requirements, a permittee that punctiliously follows every specific requirement in its permit may nevertheless face crushing penalties if the quality of the water in its receiving waters falls below the applicable standards,” Alito wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the minority opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Barrett wrote that the EPA should have the power to impose general water quality standards beyond specified limits, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a regulatory safety net considering the conditions that caused the EPA to fine San Francisco in the first place.

“The concern that the technology-based effluent limitations may fall short is on display in this case-discharges from components of San Francisco's sewer system have allegedly led to serious breaches of the water quality standards, such as “discoloration, scum, and floating material, including toilet paper, in Mission Creek.”” Barrett wrote.

The decision reversed a lower court ruling that had upheld the EPA's enforcement actions and is part of a broader effort by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to rein in regulatory agencies. Last year, the court ruled against federal regulators by overturning the precedent set by Chevron USA v. National Resource Defence Council, Inc. and overturning the Biden administration’s “Good Neighbor” provision to the Clean Air Act in Ohio v. EPA.

Impact of the Decision

Environmental groups criticized the ruling, warning that it would weaken safeguards against water pollution. “Because the EPA is not allowed to include health-based standards when regulating water pollution, it'll need to know everything about what might be discharged before a clean-water permit can be issued-making the permitting process delayed and incredibly expensive. The result is likely to be a new system where the public is regularly subjected to unsafe water quality,” said Sanjay Narayan, chief appellate counsel of Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program

However, some local governments and utilities welcomed the decision, arguing that it provides much-needed clarity. “When meeting compliance obligations may entail tearing up city streets or investing the hard-earned money of disadvantaged ratepayers, it is critical that those compliance obligations not be a moving-and mutable-target,” a coalition of utilities from New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., stated in a legal brief supporting San Francisco’s case.

For the representatives of San Francisco, this decision is a significant win. San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) General Manager Dennis Herrera issued the following joint statement on the decision, “This ruling makes clear that permitholders like San Francisco are responsible for what they discharge, and the EPA has the tools at its disposal to ensure water quality… This is a good government decision that assures certainty in water quality permitting and that every permittee has predictable, knowable standards to protect water quality.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling opens the door for future legal battles over the Clean Water Act. While the decision curtails the EPA's ability to impose broad water quality standards, it does not eliminate the agency's authority to enforce pollution limits through specific numerical thresholds. For San Francisco, the ruling provides some relief from the prospect of massive fines but does not absolve the city of its obligation to address water pollution issues. City officials have indicated they will continue upgrading their wastewater infrastructure to reduce pollution.

In a statement to 3E, the EPA said that it was reviewing the court's decision and declined to comment further.

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