WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 denied certiorari in Choice Refrigerants v. EPA — the case that sought to invoke the nondelegation doctrine to curtail the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to implement the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act's hydrofluorocarbon phasedown — leaving intact the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that upheld the EPA's power to regulate the refrigerant market under the AIM Act.
The high court's denial is a routine procedural action — the Supreme Court declines to hear the large majority of petitions it receives — but its effect in this case is to settle, at least for now, a legal question that the domestic refrigerant industry had hoped would fundamentally reshape the regulatory framework governing the HFC phasedown. Choice Refrigerants, a small Georgia-based refrigerant business represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, had argued that Congress unlawfully delegated its legislative power to the EPA by giving the agency broad authority to allocate production and consumption allowances without specific statutory limits — a constitutional argument rooted in the nondelegation doctrine that had seen renewed interest following the Supreme Court's increased skepticism of administrative agency authority in recent years.
What Choice Refrigerants Argued
The lawsuit filed by Choice Refrigerants and co-petitioner iGas challenged the EPA's implementation of the AIM Act's allowance allocation program, arguing that the statute effectively handed the agency unchecked power to decide which companies could produce, import, and sell HFC refrigerants — power that, the petitioners argued, should reside with Congress rather than with an executive agency. The D.C. Circuit rejected those arguments, finding that similar cap-and-trade regulatory structures had previously been used successfully to phase out CFCs and HCFCs and that the AIM Act provided sufficient guiding principles to satisfy constitutional requirements. The petitioners then asked the Supreme Court to take another look.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance expressed deep disappointment with the court's refusal to take up the case. Zhonette Brown, NCLA's general counsel and senior litigation counsel, said many scholars and practitioners recognize that the Article I Vesting Clause no longer serves the full purpose the founders intended, and that if the court continues to decline opportunities to enforce the separation of powers, the consequences of an expanded administrative state will continue to accelerate. NCLA president Mark Chenoweth said the case demonstrated that the D.C. Circuit — where many of the nation's most important environmental cases must be litigated — is incapable of correctly applying the nondelegation doctrine, and that if the Supreme Court will not replace or repair the doctrine, Congress needs to act.
What It Means for the AIM Act Phasedown
For the HVAC industry, the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Choice Refrigerants case removes the last significant judicial avenue for challenging the EPA's authority to implement the AIM Act's core allowance reduction schedule. The phasedown itself — which reduces domestic HFC production and consumption allowances on a statutory timetable leading to an 85% reduction from the 2011-2013 baseline by 2036 — continues on its current track. The 30% allowance reduction milestone scheduled for 2029 and the associated refrigerant supply constraints it will generate for the installed base of R-410A and other HFC-using equipment remain in effect.
The decision also has implications for the parallel litigation over the Technology Transitions Rule's commercial refrigeration provisions, where HARDI, ACCA, and PHCC filed a federal court challenge in June 2026. That challenge targets specific provisions of the reconsideration rule rather than the EPA's foundational authority under the AIM Act — a more targeted legal theory that is not affected by the SCOTUS Choice Refrigerants denial. The D.C. Circuit remains the venue for Technology Transitions litigation, and that case will proceed on its own timeline independent of the SCOTUS refusal in the Choice Refrigerants matter.
The broader regulatory context includes a significant shift in administrative law since the Supreme Court's 2024 decision overturning the Chevron doctrine, which had required courts to defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutory language. Without Chevron deference, future challenges to EPA rulemaking under the AIM Act will be judged against the court's own reading of the statute rather than against the agency's interpretation. For the AIM Act's phasedown schedule specifically, however, the statutory language is explicit and numerical rather than ambiguous — making the post-Chevron landscape less immediately consequential for the core phasedown timeline than it is for the interpretive questions around individual Technology Transitions Rule provisions.
