The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has denied a request by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to centralize the 12 different district court cases challenging the Waters of the U.S. Rule into a single court in the District of Columbia. The JPML is a special court created by Congress tasked with determining whether similar lawsuits pending in different federal district courts should be transferred and centralized in one federal district court. EPA asked the court to centralize the litigation in a move intended to gain strategic advantage by avoiding the risk that at least one of the district courts reviewing the rule would find it unlawful.