It’s official. California’s vehicle emission regulations are no longer legal, ending several rules that would have forced the sale of electric vehicles, including heavy-duty trucks.
On Thursday, June 12, President Donald Trump signed off on several resolutions that will kill three California rules that set strict vehicle emission standards: Advanced Clean Cars II, Advanced Clean Trucks and the Omnibus Low NOx regulation. Effectively, those rules are now unenforceable.
“Under the Trump administration, we will restore the full strength, might and glory of the American auto and trucking industry,” Trump said. “We will protect our truck drivers, autoworkers, small-business people and manufacturers all over our country.”
Referred to as an electric vehicle mandate, Advanced Clean Cars II would have banned the sale of new internal combustion engine passenger vehicles by model year 2035. Advanced Clean Trucks required 40% of Class 8 truck sales to be zero-direct-emission vehicles by model year 2032 and 75% of Class 4-8 non-tractor trucks by model year 2035. All sales requirements are on the manufacturers, not dealerships or consumers.
Trucking stakeholders have been sounding the alarm on California’s vehicle emission rules, claiming they are unachievable for Class 7-8 trucks. Dealerships were struggling to offer diesel trucks, as manufacturers required them to sell one electric truck before they could order or sell 13 diesel trucks. Current technology makes zero-emission trucks unfeasible for long-haul trucking and many regional operations.
The trucking industry applauded the resolutions terminating California’s stricter vehicle emission rules. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association called the move a “big win” for truck drivers.
“Our 150,000 small-business members have been saying it all along – electric trucks just aren’t a realistic option right now,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said. “They’re too expensive, and the charging infrastructure isn’t there. California’s NOx rules are already driving up the cost of doing business. We’re grateful to the lawmakers who listened to real truckers and stood up for common sense.”
With the resolutions signed into law, California’s vehicle emission rules cannot be enforced in the states that have adopted them, including 10 that have signed on to Advanced Clean Trucks.
Newsom vs. Trump
California is not going down without a fight.
Trump attempted to eliminate Advanced Clean Cars I during his first term through the regulatory process, which the Biden administration ultimately reversed. This time around, Trump used the Congressional Review Act, a more controversial method that will permanently end California’s vehicle emission rules.
The Congressional Review Act requires agencies to send new rules to Congress, allowing lawmakers to review and overturn them. Once a rule is submitted, Congress has 60 days to file a joint resolution of disapproval to revoke the rule. Rather than the typical 60 votes needed to pass a bill in the Senate, a CRA resolution requires only a simple majority.
Once signed into law, an agency is barred from issuing a similar rule in the future. In this case, California cannot request an EPA waiver for vehicle emission regulations that are “substantially the same form” as the Advanced Clean Trucks and Advanced Clean Cars II rules. If a future EPA wants to grant similar vehicle emission waivers, Congress would need to pass a law allowing it to do just that.
California’s more than 100 EPA waivers for its Clean Air Act rules, including stricter vehicle emission regulations, have never been sent to Congress or challenged through a CRA resolution.
Both the Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian have determined that those waivers are not subject to Congressional review.
Despite that determination, Republicans in Congress moved forward with the CRA resolutions anyway. Shortly after Congress passed the resolutions, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state would be filing a lawsuit against the resolution, which they did on Thursday, June 12.
“Trump’s all-out assault on California continues – and this time he’s destroying our clean air and America’s global competitiveness in the process,” Newsom said in a statement. “We are suing to stop this latest illegal action by a president who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of big polluters.”
California’s lawsuit is based on the CRA resolutions. The Golden State and 10 other states that have adopted its vehicle emission rules argue the resolutions are unconstitutional. They claim the resolutions violate the principles of federalism and were passed through an improperly expedited process.
“Put simply, the federal government carried out an illegal playbook designed to evade lawful procedures that might prevent the ‘take down’ of disfavored California laws,” the lawsuit states. “The federal government cast aside expert legal opinions and the plain text of the CRA in order to extend that statute’s expedited procedures beyond the bounds to which all states agreed.” LL
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