Major legal brawl may decide what types of cars Americans can buy

Blue states are bracing for a battle with the Trump administration over their authority to limit tailpipe emissions, a showdown that will have major repercussions on the types of cars and trucks sold to American drivers.

All sides expect President-elect Donald Trump to try to revoke states’ authority to adopt California’s strict rules on the pollution spewed by vehicles.

Many states’ efforts to fight climate change hinge on a federal process that allows them to adopt stringent regulations for transportation, the country’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

This long-standing waiver authority allows California — and the dozen or so states that follow its lead — to apply rules that go beyond federal limits and cover everything from specific pollutants to sales of certain vehicles. The states following the stricter California standards make up a significant portion of the U.S. auto market and exert major leverage over the cars that are offered to American consumers.

“It becomes a de facto national standard,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “The combined might of California and those other states is pretty significant.”

During his first term, Trump attempted to revoke California’s waiver authority, an action many states challenged as unlawful. The effort to deny the waivers was tied up in legal challenges until President Joe Biden took office. This time, Trump will have a “much more cohesive plan” to block state efforts to clean up their cars and trucks, Elkind said.

California is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to finalize several pending waivers before Trump returns to the White House. Officials in blue states are preparing to defend their authority in court should Trump seek to revoke the waivers. And attorneys general in some red states are pushing to end the waivers altogether — mounting a legal challenge to California’s power to set its own rules.

“Without [California’s waiver authority], we would probably be a decade or more behind where we are today in terms of the U.S. automotive market,” said Mary Nichols, former chair of the California Air Resources Board, the agency that issues the state’s auto regulations. “In terms of reaching our climate goals, it’s essential.”

Nichols now serves as the distinguished counsel for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law.

State efforts

When Congress enacted federal air quality laws in the 1960s, it gave California the authority to go above and beyond national standards because it was the only state to already have passed its own auto emissions rules. The state’s geography, with mountains that trap harmful pollution in heavily populated areas, also contributed to California’s unique status. Over 50-plus years, the state has received more than 100 waivers from the feds covering everything from particulate matter to catalytic converters to “check engine” lights.

The EPA allows other states to adopt the regulations set by California. Seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted some portion of California’s regulations — representing 40% of the light-duty vehicle market and more than 25% of the heavy-duty market.

“These waivers are a really important part of our strategy to reduce emissions in line with what climate science tells us what we need to do,” said Joel Creswell, climate pollution reduction program manager with the Washington State Department of Ecology. “They’re also really important for our air quality near road communities.”

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In the waning days of the Biden administration, California leaders have urged the EPA to finalize an assortment of pending waivers that cover issues including electric car sales, heavy-duty fleets, yard equipment and refrigerated trucks. The agency approved several of those waivers in December and January, including a landmark rule that will ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta, who spoke to Stateline in November, said the law requires the feds to grant and uphold the waivers unless the state’s actions are “arbitrary and capricious.”

“If there’s an attempt to revoke them by the Trump administration or a denial of them that’s unlawful, we’ll be very aggressive in taking action to protect California’s ability to seek its waivers,” he said.

Elkind, the legal expert, said Biden’s administration likely has delayed the waivers until the last minute because officials want to build a strong case that will make it difficult for Trump to revoke them.

“EPA is having to be more careful and specific about the justification for granting them,” he said, building the case that “California has an obligation to reduce emissions of these very specific pollutants, and it’s not going to be able to meet its Clean Air Act requirements without zero-emission vehicles.”

Pushing back

California’s waivers have faced opposition from a slew of industry groups, including automakers, trucking associations, railroads, agriculture interests and fossil fuel providers. In many cases, they argue that the standards require a switch to cleaner technologies that aren’t yet in wide supply or cost-effective. For instance, trucking groups say there are few semitruck engines available that meet the new standard for nitrogen oxide emissions.

“They [federal regulators] put in an aggressive standard and gave little time for the manufacturers to come up with that product,” said Mike Tunnell, senior director of energy and environmental affairs with the trade group American Trucking Associations. “As it turned out, they didn’t give them enough time.”

Tunnell said trucking dealerships in California have struggled with product shortages. As a result, some companies are continuing to use existing trucks, keeping dirty engines on the road. His group opposes another pending waiver sought by California that would require companies to transition their truck fleets to zero-emission models. Current trucks that meet that standard are significantly more expensive than typical models, Tunnell said.

Truckers in New York — which has adopted the California standard — already are struggling to buy the equipment they need, said Kendra Hems, president of the Trucking Association of New York. She noted that the state lacks charging infrastructure to support a transition to electric trucks, and that current models have a limited range that would force drivers to stop frequently along their routes.

“We’re not opposed to it, we’re simply not ready,” Hems said. “They’re asking an industry to comply with something that there’s simply not supporting infrastructure for.”

Automakers have made a similar argument about California’s electric vehicle sales mandate, saying in a statement that it will “take a miracle” to phase out new gas-powered cars by 2035.

The industry groups have argued for a consistent national standard, a cause backed by 17 Republican-led states. A coalition of attorneys general filed a lawsuit in 2022 challenging California’s power to set stricter rules.

“This is not the United States of California,” said Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who has led the legal effort, in a 2021 news release challenging California’s waivers.

In a letter to the EPA opposing Biden’s reinstatement of a waiver, Yost argued that California’s rules create a de facto national standard for automakers, which results in more expensive cars for consumers in every state. That violates states’ right to equal sovereignty, he asserted.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would review whether fuel producers — which have joined the case against the waivers — have enough cause to sue. But the court declined to consider the lawfulness of California’s underlying waiver authority.

While the legal fight continues, Elkind asserted that opponents of California’s long-standing status don’t have a strong case.

“The waiver has been granted to California repeatedly for more than a half century,” he said. “There’s solid legal ground in the Clean Air Act, and the justification is extremely well documented.”