The Trump Administration Praised a Georgia Manufacturer. Now the Company Is Suing the EPA.

In August 2025, Vice President JD Vance and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin visited cold storage equipment manufacturer Alta Refrigeration to announce plans to roll back regulations the company opposed.

The EPA followed through in May, giving manufacturers of cold storage and other equipment several more years to continue selling devices that use hydrofluorocarbons with high global warming potential as refrigerants. Now, Georgia-based Alta and the Coalition for the Use of Safe and Efficient Refrigerants—an industry group also based in Georgia and chaired by Alta’s president—are suing the EPA and Zeldin, arguing that the agency did not go far enough.

The lawsuit shows how one company sought to push the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda even further, revealing tensions between an EPA eager to roll back regulations and industry interests seeking yet more.The case is unfolding alongside a series of legal challenges to the agency’s actions, brought by a broad coalition of major industry groups representing air conditioning and equipment manufacturers, attorneys general from nearly two dozen states and an environmental group, all of whom contend the agency went too far.

The rollback and ensuing lawsuits stem from the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020, bipartisan legislation signed by President Donald Trump during his first term that mandated a gradual phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons. The chemical refrigerants are potent greenhouse gases, trapping heat in the atmosphere hundreds to thousands of times more effectively than carbon dioxide, pound for pound.

National industry groups supported both the legislation and a related international climate agreement, the Kigali Amendment, because the measures would help boost U.S. manufacturing jobs and exports. In 2023, the EPA issued a rule to help facilitate the required phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons.  

The EPA’s May action extended the transition timeline, giving Alta and other manufacturers a five-year reprieve from requirements to use more climate-friendly refrigerants in new equipment. The agency said the delay would benefit companies and lower prices for American consumers. However, Alta wants a permanent reprieve, something it said the head of the EPA previously promised.

“Administrator Zeldin stated plainly that he intended to ‘give ALTA what it was asking for,’ the company argued in a document filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September.

Before filing their lawsuit, Alta and the Coalition for the Use of Safe and Efficient Refrigerants petitioned the EPA to grant cold storage equipment manufacturers a permanent exemption from the hydrofluorocarbon phasedown. When the agency proposed a reprieve instead, Alta sought help to try to persuade the administration.

A declaration submitted by Alta President Eric Brown describes an exchange between Zeldin and a member of Georgia’s congressional delegation. The documents show screenshots of what appears to be Zeldin explaining that an act of Congress would be needed to make the rollback permanent.

The images show the request came from “Rep Buddy C.”, which may be U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-Georgia). Carter and Zeldin, a former U.S. representative from New York, served as colleagues and co-sponsored legislation during Zeldin’s tenure in Congress.

Citing the ongoing lawsuit, the EPA and Carter’s office both declined to comment.

Joseph Goffman, an EPA assistant administrator during the Biden administration who is not involved in the lawsuit, said Brown’s declaration “read as much like somebody throwing a tantrum as it did like a legal document” and praised Zeldin for “actually doing his job.”

Alta Refrigeration declined to comment.

Brown’s declaration said the EPA, through a member of Georgia’s congressional delegation, instructed him to withdraw comments Alta submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Brown wrote that he did so “under duress.”

Goffman said he had never heard of the Office of Management and Budget asking for comments to be withdrawn because the White House disagreed with their content. Goffman said Zeldin’s decision not to permanently exempt Alta from the rule does not undo his earlier decision to give Alta and others a five-year reprieve, which Goffman said should never have been granted.

The industry groups that supported the hydrofluorocarbon phasedown and are now suing the EPA over the rule change represent more than 90 percent of residential and commercial heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment manufactured and sold in North America, along with more than 60,000 plumbing and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning professionals.

American companies invested heavily to transition to new technology to comply with the phasedown of climate pollutants, and the 2026 revision disrupted that without adequate explanation, the groups noted.

“It’s bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it’s opposed by the bulk of the industry,” said David Doniger, a senior attorney and strategist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental organization that sued over the rule change. “It’s hard to think of something you could do that’s less popular or that does more harm and makes fewer friends than this.”