ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the impact of federal court decisions on the policies and administration of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in all seven of its major statutory areas. It describes how federal courts have affected the EPA and explains the policy and administrative consequences of such judicial agency interaction. At one end of the judicial intervention spectrum are cases in which the mere Filing of a lawsuit, without judicial action, has evoked a change in the EPA's policies and administration. In hundreds of cases, federal courts have given legal approval to EPA decisions without yielding changes in the agency's policies and administration. Federal court decisions have served to redistribute resources within the EPA. The typical EPA budgetary response to a court order is called "reprogramming," in which funds, and sometimes personnel, are moved from program to program within an office, or even from office to office.
