California on Sept. 20 asked a federal district court to vacate a Trump administration rule issued a day earlier that revoked the state's long-held authority to set its own greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles.
Joined by 22 states, the District of Columbia and the cities of New York and Los Angeles, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra delivered a lengthy rebuttal to the legal justification for the regulation, which was jointly issued Sept. 19 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA.
The regulation relies in part on the legal theory that a 2013 waiver allowing California to set its own greenhouse gas standards for vehicles — granted under Section 209 of the Clean Air Act — is preempted by the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act. That legal argument has already failed twice at the federal district court level, but EPA General Counsel Matthew Leopold said at an event announcing the rule that he is confident it will be reviewed favorably this time.
Originally included in August 2018 as part of the Trump administration's proposed Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles, or SAFE rule, the EPA and NHTSA opted to finalize the rule revoking California's waiver authority in a separate action.
In challenging the legal justification for the waiver withdrawal, California argued in a brief filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the action is unlawful because it purports to allow federal agencies to determine what the Energy Policy and Conservation Act does and does not preempt. Moreover, California argued that the waiver withdrawal violates the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to assess the damage the preemption rule would inflict on the environment and public health.
The waiver withdrawal followed news reports that the agencies are struggling to complete the underlying technical justification for the SAFE rule, which would roll back fuel economy standards for cars and light-duty trucks established under the Obama administration. While the Obama-era standards were set to ratchet up to 54.5 miles per gallon by model year 2025, the SAFE rule would instead freeze those standards at 37 miles per gallon for model years 2020 through 2026.
The Trump administration has claimed the weaker standards will reduce the price of new vehicles and therefore save lives by prompting drivers to scrap their older cars and trucks for newer, safer models — a claim disputed during the rulemaking process by EPA career staff. The EPA and NHTSA also estimated the SAFE rule would increase CO2 emissions by 713 million tonnes compared to retaining the Obama-era standards. That is roughly equal to 40% of total CO2 emissions from the U.S. transportation sector in 2016, according to EPA data.
A final version of the SAFE rule is expected to be issued sometime this fall. Meanwhile, four automakers representing 30% of the U.S. auto market — Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co. Ltd., Volkswagen AG, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG — and the Canadian government have already pledged to follow California's clean car rules. Those automakers are now under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for potential antitrust violations.
