Clean Water — News & Analysis

EPA goes to court to void PFAS standards; files motion to eliminate GenX and three others (September 11, 2025)

September 11, 2025 — The Trump EPA escalated its PFAS rollback by filing a motion in federal court to formally vacate the enforceable drinking water standards for GenX, PFHxS, PFNA, and PFBS — the four PFAS chemicals it had announced in May it intended to rescind. The motion asked the court to strike the standards before the EPA had even completed the formal rulemaking process required to officially repeal them, in effect bypassing the public comment period required under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Former EPA water science director Dr. Betsy Southerland said the move was designed to weaken protections as rapidly as possible regardless of the legal requirements: "EPA is delaying enforceable safeguards and reopening protections for dangerous forever chemicals." Environmental lawyers noted the court filing was a back-channel attempt to achieve the same rollback the agency was simultaneously pursuing through the slower standard rulemaking pathway. Communities where water systems had detected only the four now-targeted chemicals, but not PFOA or PFOS, would lose all mandatory protection if the motion succeeded.

The filing came as PFAS contamination data from the EPA itself showed that the chemicals were present in water systems serving Americans in all 50 states. Research had found PFAS contaminating drinking water sources for at least 16 million people in 33 states and Puerto Rico, and in groundwater in at least 38 states. At least 91 percent of regulated coal plants across the U.S. were contaminating groundwater with PFAS or other pollutants above federal health thresholds — a separate but connected vector of water contamination that the administration was simultaneously deregulating.