On May 21, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed environmental groups’ suit challenging EPA’s decision to grant Louisiana’s Class VI Primacy request, holding that each of the groups failed to establish standing to sue. Deep South Center for Environmental Justice v. EPA, No. 24-60084 (5th Cir. 2025).
The groups, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Healthy Gulf, and Alliance for Affordable Energy, filed a petition in February 2024 with the Fifth Circuit requesting that the court “hold unlawful, vacate, and set aside” EPA’s final rule that approved Louisiana’s 2021 application for Class VI Primacy. Several intervenors in the suit, including the State of Louisiana and oil and gas trade associations, disputed the groups’ ability to establish standing. To rebut the intervenors’ standing argument, the groups alleged a number of economic, aesthetic, and recreational injuries, among others, resulting from EPA’s approval of Louisiana’s primacy application.
However, the Fifth Circuit found that the groups’ alleged injuries associated with the grant of primacy to the State of Louisiana for permitting Class VI wells were too hypothetical and rested on a “highly attenuated chain of possibilities.” The groups’ expenditures to oppose the Class VI buildout, the chance that EPA’s approval of the Louisiana program would increase energy costs to consumers, and the potential injuries of group members should a Class VI well be permitted and experience some mishap were all held to be too speculative to establish the standing required to challenge EPA’s grant of primacy. Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit dismissed the groups’ petition for review for a failure to demonstrate standing.
This decision, of course, does not foreclose the ability of a citizen or group to challenge an individual Class VI permit given the right set of facts to establish standing in that particular case.
After withstanding this judicial challenge, Louisiana remains one of just four states with Class VI Primacy.
For further questions regarding Class VI wells or related topics, contact Liskow attorneys Greg Johnson, Jeff Lieberman, Clare Bienvenu, and Colin North.