Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Douglas M. Costle, as Administrator, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that “an administrative agency either must conform with its own precedents or explain its departure from them”
• holding that CWA “assigned secondary priority to the standards and placed primary emphasis upon both a point source discharge permit program and federal technology-based effluent limitations.”
• saying that the administrative record includes materials that were “before the agency at the time the decision was made” (emphasis added)
• explaining that “[a]rbitrary and capricious” review is “highly deferential” and “presumes the agency’s action to be valid”
• explaining that the “highly deferential” arbitrary and capricious standard “mandates judicial affirmance if a rational basis for the agency’s decision is presented ... even though we might otherwise disagree”
• rejecting challenge which argued that EPA had unreasonably “fail[ed] to propose revised or new water quality standard,”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).