Peter Williams v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al.

Clean Air Act §307(b)(1)’s typical claims-process rule requires petitioning for review within 60 days of final action of the Administrator. Since 1990, unique among such forms of review, administrative petitions to reconsider do not stay an action’s finality. In 2022, EPA staff erred factually and legally by denying an informal Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) adjudication to enter a new program with annual distributions, which petitioner immediately met with staff to correct, following up by administratively petitioning to correct within the 60-day window. When EPA issued the next year’s distribution without deciding the administrative petition, he sued for constructive denial, which the D.C. Circuit found jurisdictionally barred by the 60-day window and §304(a)(2), another 1990 Clean Air Act provision, which expanded district court jurisdiction for failure to take nondiscretionary action. The present petition for review challenged not only the 2022 staff action but also EPA’s 2024 denial of two of four then-pending administrative petitions. In both petitions for review, the Court of Appeals granted EPA’s motions to dismiss without the administrative record, over petitioners’ objection. A record would have shown that subordinate staff without the Administrator’s delegated authority took the 2022 action and that nothing hinged on the partial 2024 denial in isolation (i.e., EPA could grant the two pending petitions before the next annual distribution). The questions presented for summary decision are:

1. Whether this Court’s supervening decision on nonjurisdictional 60-day windows bars res judicata?

2. Whether review of action unlawfully withheld remains under §307(b)(1) or moved to §304(a)(2)?