Key Points

  • The Fifth Circuit affirmed the Northern District of Texas's dismissal of a consumer suit challenging DOE's 2024 water-use rules for dishwashers and clothes washers.
  • Consumers who allege the rules eliminated their preferred appliances have standing under the 'lost opportunity to purchase' theory recognized in Louisiana v. DOE, even without expressly alleging they would buy the barred products.
  • 42 U.S.C. § 6306(b) implicitly vests exclusive initial jurisdiction over challenges to § 6295 rules in the courts of appeals; the § 6306(c) district-court carve-outs reinforce that reading.
  • Applying NRC v. Texas, the panel held the plaintiffs' claim was a statutory-authority argument, not a Leedom v. Kyne ultra vires claim, because a positive grant of authority is not an express prohibition.
  • The § 6306(b)(4) clause preserving 'other remedies provided by law' does not create district-court jurisdiction over claims framed as equitable.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that consumers who say the U.S. Department of Energy's 2024 water-use limits for dishwashers and clothes washers eliminated their preferred machines have standing to sue, but must bring the challenge directly to a federal court of appeals rather than a trial court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Bill Word and David Daquin in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the opinion for the panel, which also included Judges Jones and Duncan.

The decision holds that the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, the 1975 law governing efficiency standards for household appliances, implicitly strips district courts of power to hear challenges to rules issued under its standard-setting provision, 42 U.S.C. § 6295. The panel also rejected two routes the plaintiffs used to try to stay in district court: recasting the case as an "ultra vires" claim, an argument that an agency acted wholly outside its legal powers, and invoking a clause that preserves "other remedies provided by law."

According to the opinion, Congress in 1992 authorized the department to set standards for four water-using products: showerheads, faucets, water closets and urinals. In 2007, Congress itself set energy and water-use standards for residential dishwashers and clothes washers. The department adopted stricter water limits in 2012 and, in 2024, issued two direct final rules that further reduced water-use limits and changed the measurement scheme. In 2025, the opinion notes, the department issued notices proposing to revert to the statutory limits because it believed it had exceeded its authority.

Word and Daquin sued in June 2024, seeking a declaration that the department has no authority to set water-use standards for appliances other than the four Congress named, and an injunction requiring it to restore the congressional standards for dishwashers and clothes washers. The district court dismissed the case with prejudice, concluding that although the review statute says aggrieved persons "may" petition a court of appeals, "may means must." It later denied the plaintiffs' motion to alter the judgment, writing that "[l]ack of discussion does not equate to lack of consideration."

On standing, the department argued that "an alleged reduction in choice, by itself, is insufficient to establish standing to challenge the DFRs." The panel disagreed, relying on its 2024 decision in Louisiana v. DOE, which recognized the "lost opportunity to purchase" products barred by regulation as a legal injury. That decision reasoned that "market participants are therefore injured when their choices are constrained by regulation," and the plaintiffs' complaint alleged that "their choice of a preferred clothes washer or dishwasher would be eliminated by these rules."

Douglas acknowledged that, unlike the Louisiana plaintiffs, Word and Daquin did not explicitly say they would buy the appliances the rules forbid. But she wrote that "it is reasonably inferable from their complaint that Appellants would purchase those appliances if given the opportunity," noting in a footnote that the case was decided at the motion-to-dismiss stage, where the plaintiffs' factual allegations must be accepted as true.

The plaintiffs argued that Congress had not removed district courts' default federal-question jurisdiction. "Here, Congress implicitly stripped the district court of its power to adjudicate issues arising from § 6295," Douglas wrote, adding that the only two other circuits to consider a similar challenge, the Second and Ninth, had reached the same conclusion.

The panel pointed to the statute's two express grants of district court jurisdiction, for suits over state compliance with the act and suits challenging the department's refusal to open a rulemaking when petitioned. "Such jurisdictional exceptions underscore our conclusion that Congress intended to provide for exclusive jurisdiction in the circuit courts for scenarios outside those listed in the jurisdictional carveout," Douglas wrote.

Applying the three-part test from the Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, the panel found appeals court review adequate because "there is no precursor violation that Appellants must trigger to bring suit" and no additional fact-finding was needed. It agreed with the department that the plaintiffs' claim "rises or falls on whether the agency properly exercised its authority under EPCA," making it part of the statutory scheme rather than collateral to it. The plaintiffs' argument about agency expertise, Douglas wrote, "misses a key point: district court jurisdiction here does not supplant agency jurisdiction."

The panel then turned to the ultra vires theory, citing the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas, which confined such review to the narrow exception recognized in Leedom v. Kyne in 1958. Douglas wrote that the plaintiffs' claim was "nothing more than a 'statutory-authority argument' 'dress[ed] up . . . as an ultra vires claim,'" and that the exception "applies only when an agency has taken action entirely in excess of its delegated powers and contrary to a specific prohibition in a statute."

The plaintiffs had argued that by limiting the department's water authority to four named products, Congress clearly barred it from regulating others. "A positive grant of authority does not equate to an express prohibition," Douglas wrote, concluding that the plaintiffs had failed "to provide a clear statutory prohibition that the DOE defied."

The court also rejected the savings-clause argument. The plaintiffs said the provision preserving "other remedies provided by law" kept open district court review of what they characterized as an equitable claim. Douglas wrote that they "fail to explain how a statutory provision preserving 'other remedies provided by law' would afford a jurisdictional carveout for remedies arising in equity." The panel found the plaintiffs' reliance on Justice Gorsuch's concurrence in the 2023 case Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC misplaced, because that opinion addressed a Securities Exchange Act clause preserving remedies that "may exist at law or in equity."

The ruling leaves the district court's dismissal with prejudice in place and does not reach whether the department exceeded its authority. The opinion notes that the plaintiffs may seek judicial review in a circuit court under the act's petition-for-review provision, § 6306(b).