On April 21, 2026, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its Administrator Lee Zeldin in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The complaint, filed as Case No. 1:26-cv-01350, seeks to compel the EPA to fulfill a mandatory, non-discretionary duty under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a duty that has gone unfulfilled for over a year, leaving millions of workers and their families exposed to the continuing hazard of legacy asbestos.
Why This Lawsuit Was Filed
The legal foundation for the lawsuit is straightforward. On December 3, 2024, the EPA published its final Part 2 risk evaluation for asbestos (89 Fed. Reg. 95777), concluding that legacy asbestos — the asbestos-containing materials installed in millions of homes, schools, factories, and workplaces across the United States throughout the twentieth century poses an "unreasonable risk of injury to human health." Under TSCA section 6(c)(1)(A), 15 U.S.C. § 2605(c)(1)(A), that finding triggered a mandatory obligation: EPA was required to propose a risk management rule within one year — no later than December 3, 2025.
EPA did not meet that deadline. It proposed no rule. It offered no explanation. The statutory clock ran out, and the agency remained silent.
On February 13, 2026, ADAO provided formal written notice to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of its intent to sue, as required by TSCA's citizen suit provision, section 20(b)(2), 15 U.S.C. § 2619(b)(2). More than sixty days passed without any regulatory action. Accordingly, ADAO filed the complaint seeking both a declaratory judgment that EPA is in violation of its non-discretionary statutory duty and an injunction ordering EPA to propose the required rule by a date certain.
This suit did not arise in a vacuum. ADAO's history of litigation with the EPA on asbestos regulation is extensive. In 2019, ADAO successfully challenged EPA's exclusion of legacy asbestos from its initial risk evaluation in the Ninth Circuit. Subsequently, ADAO secured a consent agreement establishing a court-ordered deadline for EPA to complete its Part 2 legacy asbestos risk evaluation, a deadline EPA met when it published its December 2024 findings. The current lawsuit is the next chapter: compelling EPA to follow through with the required regulatory response to those findings.
Workers' Compensation and the Asbestos Crisis
The ADAO lawsuit sits squarely within one of workers' compensation law's most persistent and tragic domains. Legacy asbestos, insulation, floor tiles, roofing materials, siding, pipes, boilers, and gaskets installed over the last century remain embedded in countless older buildings across the country. Exposure occurs not at the point of manufacture, which has largely ceased domestically, but during maintenance, renovation, repair, and demolition activities. This means that the workers most at risk today are those who encounter asbestos incidentally, often without adequate warning: construction workers, pipefitters, electricians, plumbers, firefighters, and teachers in older school buildings.
The ADAO complaint cites research establishing that asbestos-related diseases cause nearly 40,000 deaths in the United States annually. Mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis — the signature diseases of asbestos exposure — have long latency periods, meaning that workers exposed today may not manifest disease for decades. Workers' compensation systems across the country are acutely familiar with this phenomenon. Claims for asbestos-related occupational disease represent some of the most complex, expensive, and contested matters in the field.
New Jersey has historically been among the states most affected by asbestos-related workers' compensation litigation, given the concentration of industrial facilities, shipyards, refineries, and older commercial and institutional buildings. The continued failure of federal regulation to address legacy asbestos, despite EPA's own finding of unreasonable risk, directly prolongs this problem. Without a risk management rule, there are no enforceable federal standards governing how legacy asbestos must be handled during building renovation and demolition, how workers must be protected, or how asbestos-containing waste must be managed. The occupational disease pipeline that feeds the workers' compensation system continues to flow.
The connection between the regulatory failure at issue in the ADAO case and the workers' compensation system is not abstract. Every worker who is exposed to disturbed asbestos-containing materials without adequate protection is a potential future claimant. Every employer in the construction, maintenance, and demolition trades carries workers' compensation exposure that is directly linked to the absence of enforceable federal legacy asbestos standards. Every state workers' compensation fund and private insurer bears financial exposure for claims that a robust EPA risk management rule could help prevent.
Impact on the National Workers' Compensation System
The implications of the ADAO lawsuit, and of EPA's underlying regulatory failure, extend well beyond environmental law. For the workers' compensation system, the stakes are national in scope and substantial in magnitude.
First, a successful outcome in ADAO v. EPA would compel the EPA to propose a risk management rule that imposes legally enforceable obligations on owners and operators of asbestos-containing structures. Such a rule would establish workplace exposure limits, safe-handling requirements, and waste-disposal standards that, if effectively implemented, would reduce future asbestos exposures and corresponding occupational disease claims. This is primary prevention at the regulatory level, exactly the kind of upstream intervention that has long been recognized as essential to controlling occupational disease costs in the workers' compensation system.
Second, the litigation has implications for third-party liability analysis. In workers' compensation practice, asbestos claims frequently involve third-party actions against manufacturers, property owners, and contractors whose negligence or product defects contributed to the worker's exposure. EPA's formal determination that legacy asbestos presents an unreasonable risk — and the ongoing failure to regulate it is potentially significant evidence in such proceedings, bearing on questions of notice, foreseeability, and the standard of care owed by property owners and employers who control asbestos-containing structures.
Third, the ADAO lawsuit highlights a broader concern about the current regulatory environment's capacity to protect workers. The complaint names EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as a defendant, reflecting the current administration's posture toward environmental and occupational health regulation. The failure to issue a risk management rule, despite a completed scientific evaluation confirming unreasonable risk, raises questions about whether regulatory protections for workers can be adequately enforced through agency action alone, or whether litigation by advocacy organizations will be required to compel compliance with statutory mandates.
Fourth, ADAO's call for passage of the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now (ARBAN) Act, named for the late husband of ADAO President Linda Reinstein, who died of mesothelioma, would, if enacted, accomplish through legislation what the regulatory process has repeatedly failed to achieve: a comprehensive ban on asbestos in the United States. Such legislation would represent a generational shift in occupational disease prevention, ultimately reducing the burden on workers' compensation systems across all states.
Conclusion
The ADAO v. EPA lawsuit is a landmark action in the ongoing legal battle against asbestos-related disease. Its significance for workers' compensation practitioners is direct and immediate: the regulatory framework, or the absence of it, shapes the occupational disease landscape that workers' compensation systems must address for decades to come. As the case proceeds before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, practitioners, employers, and insurers should follow its progress closely. The outcome will determine whether the EPA is finally compelled to protect the millions of workers who encounter legacy asbestos in the course of their daily work.
Case Reference: ADAO v. Zeldin and U.S. EPA, Case No. 1:26-cv-01350 (D.D.C., filed April 21, 2026).
Statutory References: Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) §§ 6(a), 6(c)(1)(A), 20(a)(2), 20(b)(2), 15 U.S.C. §§ 2605(a), 2605(c)(1)(A), 2619(a)(2), 2619(b)(2).
Sources: ADAO Press Release, April 21, 2026; ADAO v. Zeldin, Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief (Bloomberg Law Court Dockets, Case 1:26-cv-01350, Document 1, filed 04/21/26).
*Jon L. Gelman of Wayne, NJ, is the author of NJ Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise Modern Workers' Compensation Law (West-Thomson-Reuters).
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