California is leading nearly two dozen states in challenging the Trump administration’s weakening of fuel economy standards in court, arguing that recently uncovered internal White House documents make clear that the rule is on shaky legal ground.
“We won’t retreat when it comes to tackling the No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions, not now, not ever,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said on Wednesday. “We’re going to fight with everything we have.”
California is leading attorneys general from 23 states, D.C., and four cities in challenging the Trump administration’s fuel economy rule. A coalition of a dozen environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Union of Concerned Scientists, also filed challenges Wednesday, claiming the Trump agencies’ rule is unlawful and filled with scientific and mathematical errors.
Becerra, a Democrat, linked the Trump administration’s rollback with the coronavirus pandemic, saying that pollution-related respiratory illnesses make people more susceptible to the virus. He cited estimates by the Environmental Defense Fund showing the Trump fuel economy standards would result in 250,000 more asthma attacks and 350,000 more respiratory illnesses.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in March sharply weakened Obama-era fuel economy standards. The agencies’ rule requires carmakers to improve fuel efficiency by 1.5% year over year through 2026. The Obama administration’s rule would have required a nearly 5% year-over-year improvement.
The fight over the fuel economy standards is one of the most contentious legal brawls between the Trump administration and California, which has fiercely contested the White House’s deregulatory push on environmental protections.
California has long imposed stricter fuel economy and pollution standards for the transportation sector.
The Golden State has a special ability under the Clean Air Act to set tailpipe limits for cars that are stricter than federal levels. That authority used to include greenhouse gases as well as conventional air pollutants, but the Trump administration eliminated the state’s ability to set stronger greenhouse gas limits last year.
California, backed by a coalition of states, is already challenging that action in a separate lawsuit. More than a dozen states have pledged to follow California’s standards.
For the lawsuit announced on Wednesday against the relaxed standards, Becerra said interagency documents revealing concerns raised by EPA and White House staff will help the states prove their case. Those include documents made public earlier this month that show White House budget office staff flagged concerns that the legal justification for the fuel economy rule was “lacking” just 12 days before its release.
“The administration has tried to hide the ball,” Becerra said, adding that the states are “going to be especially vigorous in our attempts to get all documents” related to the development of the rule.
Becerra and other attorneys general also pointed to Trump administration data showing its own rule would be a “job killer.”
The Trump administration’s rule would be “especially harmful to Michigan,” home to the three biggest U.S. automakers, said Dana Nessel, the state’s attorney general. The Trump agencies’ own analysis shows the weaker standards would prompt a 4% decrease in automotive industry-related jobs, she added.
The agencies were already facing a challenge to the fuel economy standards, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that is arguing the agencies should have gone further to weaken the targets.
The EPA and NHTSA had initially proposed to freeze the standards at 2020 levels before settling on the 1.5% annual improvement.
Automakers have already said they’ll defend the Trump administration’s standards in that lawsuit. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents all major car makers that sell in the U.S., filed May 22 to intervene, saying it doesn’t support flat fuel economy standards.
Even so, the filing exposed a split in the auto industry. Six companies — Honda, BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Volkswagen — aren’t participating in the motion to intervene, according to the trade group. Four of those companies have publicly sided with California in the fuel economy fight, striking a deal with the state last year to follow standards stricter than the Trump administration’s rule but slightly weaker than the Obama-era targets.
The deal infuriated the Trump administration, which pursued but ultimately dropped a Justice Department antitrust probe into the companies.
Becerra said California’s deal with Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, and Honda helps show the Obama-era fuel economy targets were viable and achievable.
Nonetheless, Nessel said she wasn’t sure whether any automakers would intervene to support the states in their challenge. She suggested they might not out of fear of retaliation by the White House.
Nessel also said in her conversations with auto industry officials, they often boast of their electric vehicle plans.
“What they want more than anything, they want predictability and stability,” Nessel said of the three big U.S. automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Fiat Chrysler — housed in her state. But, “no one who is affiliated with those companies wants to wake up and see themselves on the wrong end of a mean tweet by President Trump,” she added.
