On Monday, multiple organizations filed a lawsuit challenging exemptions from President Donald Trump’s administration that would allow coke ovens to spew chemicals that lead to hazardous air pollution.
Involved organizations include the Environmental Law and Policy Center, EarthJustice, Just Transition Northwest Indiana, Hoosier Environmental Council and Sierra Club.
“This latest proclamation for coke ovens continues the Trump administration’s year-long practice of undermining industry’s compliance with toxic air pollutant standards by issuing meritless exemptions and delays,” Brian Lynk, senior attorney at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said in a news release. “The communities who live with these plants and depend on clean and healthy air, in Northwest Indiana and around the country, deserve better.”
Coke ovens are used in steelmaking, heating coal to produce coke, which is used as a fuel. The ovens are a “major source of hazardous pollution,” according to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, which includes toxic chemicals and metals, including lead, mercury and benzene.
In November, Trump issued a proclamation providing regulatory relief for coke ovens nationwide, according to the White House, claiming that a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency coke oven rule places “severe burdens on the coke production industry” and affects American infrastructure, defense and national security.
“Many of the testing and monitoring requirements outlined in the coke oven rule rely on technologies that are not practically available, not demonstrated at the necessary scale, or cannot be implemented safely or consistently under real-world conditions,” the proclamation said. “Due to the coke oven rule’s onerous implementation and compliance schedule for these standards, many coke production facilities are in the impossible position of designing and engineering novel systems with unproven technology within a short time frame.”
It allows a two-year exemption to the coke oven rule because Trump claimed the technology doesn’t exist commercially and cannot allow corporations to comply with the rule. The Environmental Law and Policy Center claims that the exemption applied to more than 180 facilities across six industries.
“The Trump administration is delivering another tough blow to local communities,” Tosh Sagar, senior attorney at EarthJustice, said in a news release. “These unlawful exemptions have real consequences for real people. While people living near these toxic coke oven facilities are breathing in poison every day, corporate polluters get another pass. Corporate profits should not come at the expense of public health.”
According to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the EPA finalized revisions to the Clean Air Act that introduced the 2024 coke ovens rule, which “introduced a fenceline monitoring requirement, stricter limits on leaks from coke oven battery doors, lids and offtakes, and new emission standards for several hazardous air pollutants.”
Compliance deadlines were staggered between July 2025 and January 2026.
“Communities living near steel industry coke ovens advocated for many years for common-sense federal regulations to protect them from hazardous air pollution,” Haley Lewis, senior attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a news release. “The EPA’s 2024 rule requiring air monitoring and cleanup of dangerous levels of pollution from coke ovens would have provided meaningful improvements, had President Trump not granted an exemption last month. This exemption should be thrown out by the courts for the sake of the health of all the workers and families living near the industry.”
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