Cite as: 531 U. S. 457 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
on which it is based) "at five-year intervals" and make "such revisions . . . as may be appropriate." CAA § 109(d)(1), 42 U. S. C. § 7409(d)(1). These cases arose when, on July 18, 1997, the Administrator revised the NAAQS for particulate matter and ozone. See NAAQS for Particulate Matter, 62 Fed. Reg. 38652 (codified in 40 CFR § 50.7 (1999)); NAAQS for Ozone, id., at 38856 (codified in 40 CFR §§ 50.9, 50.10 (1999)). American Trucking Associations, Inc., and its co-respondents in No. 99-1257—which include, in addition to other private companies, the States of Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia—challenged the new standards in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 7607(b)(1).
The District of Columbia Circuit accepted some of the challenges and rejected others. It agreed with the No. 99- 1257 respondents (hereinafter respondents) that § 109(b)(1) delegated legislative power to the Administrator in contravention of the United States Constitution, Art. I, § 1, because it found that the EPA had interpreted the statute to provide no "intelligible principle" to guide the agency's exercise of authority. American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. EPA, 175 F. 3d 1027, 1034 (1999). The court thought, however, that the EPA could perhaps avoid the unconstitutional delegation by adopting a restrictive construction of § 109(b)(1), so instead of declaring the section unconstitutional the court remanded the NAAQS to the agency. Id., at 1038. (On this delegation point, Judge Tatel dissented, finding the statute constitutional as written. Id., at 1057.) On the second issue that the Court of Appeals addressed, it unanimously rejected respondents' argument that the court should depart from the rule of Lead Industries Assn., Inc. v. EPA, 647 F. 2d 1130, 1148 (CADC 1980), that the EPA may not consider the cost of implementing a NAAQS in setting the initial standard. It also rejected respondents' argument that the implementation provisions for ozone found in Part D, Subpart 2, of Title I of the CAA, 42 U. S. C. §§ 7511-7511f, were
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