[April 7, 2026]: Today, Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) filed an amicus brief supporting a small business’s Supreme Court petition challenging power grabs by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Years ago, Congress instructed the EPA to create a program to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a common refrigerant found in air conditioners and refrigerators. But in doing so, it gave EPA broad authority to write its own laws however it wanted, threatening the very existence of small businesses like Choice Refrigerants.

SLF is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in this case because lower courts have allowed EPA to get away with this abuse for too long and have failed to hold Congress accountable for creating open-ended laws.

EPA relied on a law—the AIM Act—to justify granting certain allowances in the cap-and-trade program to a foreign competitor who imported a knock-off version of Choice’s proprietary HFC product, and to Choice’s former business partner, rather than to Choice Refrigerants itself.

Yet when Choice Refrigerants challenged EPA, the D.C. Circuit Court relied on a different law—the Clean Air Act—to assume that Congress meant to include certain language in the AIM Act giving EPA broad authority to enact its overreaching program.

As SLF explains in its brief, courts should never be in the business of presuming congressional intent and should instead look at the text of the law to determine its meaning. And when looking at the text, it is clear that EPA does not have as much power as it thinks it has.