Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services v. Trump

In July 2025, President Trump issued a proclamation exempting 50 chemical manufacturers from the 2024 Hazardous Organic National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants rule (HON rule). These standards protect Americans from exposure to toxic air pollutants—like benzene, ethylene oxide, and chloroprene—that are released in the making of everyday plastics, rubber, and fuel additives. Exposure to these hazardous air pollutants is known to cause health issues, including cancer, respiratory diseases, and reproductive harm. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that its 2024 HON rule update would reduce toxic air pollution by more than 6,200 tons and would reduce cancer risks in communities near regulated facilities by 96 percent. 

President Trump’s HON rule exemption unilaterally sweeps away those protections for nearly one-quarter of all HON-regulated facilities. Those facilities, in states from Louisiana to Michigan, now have a free pass to continue to pollute and put communities at risk for an additional two years. 

To exempt these chemical plants, the Trump administration exploited a narrow and, until this year, never-before-used provision of the Clean Air Act. Section 112(i)(4) of the act provides authority to exempt sources from a hazardous air pollutant standard if the president determines that the technology to implement the rule is “not available” and that an exemption is in the national security interests of the United States. But the Trump proclamation does not provide any evidence that the technology is not available—because it is. In fact, many of the 2024 rule’s protections come from better work practices, like more frequent leak monitoring and prohibitions on delaying repairs or bypassing control equipment. 

NOTE: This map is best viewed on a desktop/laptop/tablet; on mobile, the map is best viewed in Chrome.

What makes this free pass to pollute even more appalling is that the EPA concluded that the 2024 rule’s updates were necessary to address and provide an adequate margin of safety from the residual health risks posed by these facilities’ toxic emissions. The 2024 rule imposes, for the first time, requirements for these facilities to control emissions of ethylene oxide, a highly carcinogenic pollutant linked to leukemia, lymphoma, and breast cancer.  

The effect of these exemptions is particularly devastating in already overburdened communities in Louisiana and Texas. Of the exempted facilities, 70 percent are consolidated in these two states, including facilities located in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”—a stretch of communities along the Mississippi River that is subjected to toxic pollution from more than 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical operations. Every year, 85 cases of cancer in Louisiana can be attributed to exposure to high levels of toxic air pollution. 

President Trump’s abuse of Section 112(i)(4) is not just limited to HON-regulated chemical manufacturers. In April, he exempted nearly one-third of coal-fired power plants from mercury and air toxics standards, nearly half of all commercial medical sterilizers from ethylene oxide standards, and the entire taconite iron-ore processing industry from mercury standards.  

President Trump’s exemptions of chemical plants from regulations of hazardous air pollutants not only sacrifices the health of communities, but they are also illegal and undemocratic. Never before has a president claimed the authority to mass exempt from EPA regulations—rules issued only a year ago after extensive scientific and technical review and full public notice and comment.  

NRDC and our partners—Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project, and Environmental Defense Fund, representing Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, Air Alliance Houston, Concerned Citizens of St. John, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, RISE St. James Louisiana, and Sierra Club—have filed suit in the District Court of the District of Columbia to challenge this ultra vires and illegal exemption.