Attorney General Ellison sues Trump Administration over rule that weakens regulation of highly potent greenhouse gas
New Trump EPA rule would illegally increase HFCs that contribute to climate change while Minnesota burns and Minnesotans suffer from poor air quality directly related to climate change
July 21, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today joined a coalition of 19 attorneys general and the City of New York in filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), challenging its rule that would weaken regulations designed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in commercial equipment. HFCs are chemicals used for refrigeration and cooling that are up to 10,000 times more potent than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide, and they are among the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions both in the United States and around the world. The Trump EPA rule rolls back some of the existing deadlines for industry to move from using HFCs as refrigerant gases to refrigerants with less greenhouse effect, known as Global Warming Potential (GWP). This undermines EPA’s current regulations under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act), which are designed to phase out HFCs by approximately 85 percent by 2036.
In the petition filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Attorney General Ellison and the coalition ask the Court to review EPA’s new rule because it is contrary to law and EPA fails to justify its change in position.
“Another day, another illegal Trump administration effort to put corporate profits ahead of Minnesotans who are suffering from the effects of climate change,” Attorney General Ellison said. “While Minnesota is enduring the longest streak of temperatures above 90 degrees in nearly 80 years, our precious Boundary Waters are burning in an unprecedented fire, and Minnesotans across our state are suffering from and being hospitalized because of poor air quality, Trump wants to dramatically increase the amount of dangerous greenhouse gases released into our air — and to do so illegally. Once again, I’m suing to stop him and protect Minnesotans from the danger he and his administration pose to our environment and our health, especially including the health of our children and elders.”
HFCs are widely used in commercial, residential, and mobile cooling systems, such as air conditioning and refrigeration. Once deemed a safer alternative for the environment relative to ozone-depleting substances (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs), which damage the earth’s ozone layer, HFCs were later discovered to pose a major threat to the climate. With greenhouse effects (or GWPs) hundreds to thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide over a hundred-year period, HFCs have been projected to contribute up to 0.5 degrees Celsius (about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) to global surface warming by 2100 if they are not controlled. Because of this extreme potency, HFCs’ increasing share of emissions, and their relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere, reducing consumption and production of HFCs is particularly important for addressing climate change.
In December 2020, President Trump signed the bipartisan AIM Act into law. The AIM Act provides a framework through which the United States will phase out the production and consumption of HFCs by about 85% by 2036. That law limits production and imports of HFCs in the U.S. to declining amounts of historic baseline levels — 60 percent today, declining to 30 percent in 2029, and 15 percent in 2036. The law requires EPA to help industry transition to a lower supply of these gases by setting limits for sectors with more readily available alternatives to protect costs and supply for those sectors that will take longer to transition.
To enforce the AIM Act, the Biden Administration EPA promulgated the Technology Transitions rule. It required specific sectors that use refrigerants to install technology that uses gases with lower GWP when installing new equipment. For example, under the Technology Transitions rule, new remote condensing units — typically used to refrigerate food by retailers like supermarkets, bakeries, and conveniences stores — were limited to using refrigerants with 150 to 300 GWP, depending on the system, starting January 1, 2026. With EPA’s rollback, new remote condensing units can use refrigerants with 10 times greater global warming potential (up to 1,400 GWP) until January 1, 2032.
If allowed to move forward, the new Trump EPA rule will increase HFC emissions, accelerating the damage already threatening our planet from climate change. As a prominent example, Minnesota is currently experiencing an unprecedented wave of forest fires driven in part by climate change, which produces drier, windier, hotter days. The current outbreak of forest fires in Minnesota is directly related to a streak of 10 straight days in which temperatures exceeded 90 degrees — the third-longest streak of its kind and the first in 78 years. Since 1984, the number of large fires and area burned by wildfires across the United States has doubled.
Further, by undermining the parallel reduction in HFC supply and demand, the rule threatens to cause shortages and price spikes in the HFC market that could be passed from retailers to consumers.
In the lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison and the coalition allege that EPA’s final rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the AIM Act.
Joining Attorney General Ellison in the lawsuit are California Attorney General Bonta, Massachusetts Attorney General Campbell, and Washington Attorney General Brown, who led the coalition; the attorneys general of Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin; and the City of New York, New York.
