The Supreme Court last week took up a case related to a challenge of California’s Clean Air Act waiver — but rejected the broader question of whether the Golden State has the legal authority to impose the nation’s strongest auto pollution standards.
Legal opponents of California’s long-standing vehicle emissions program said they were pleased that the justices plan to examine business groups’ standing to bring their case and expressed optimism that the court could review the question at the heart of their challenge at a later date.
“The drastic impacts of California’s EV mandates on consumers, national security and electricity reliability are major questions in need of immediate resolution as California and the U.S. EPA continue to stretch and abuse the limits of Congress’ Clean Air Act waiver provision,” said Chet Thompson, president and CEO of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, one of the groups challenging the waiver.
He said Congress did not give the state authority to regulate greenhouse gases, mandate electric vehicles or ban new gas car sales — “all of which the state is attempting to do through its intentional misreading of statute.”
California’s Clean Air Act waiver, granted in recognition of the state’s unique air pollution problems, has been in effect since the Nixon administration, except for a period when EPA revoked it under then-President Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide only whether fossil fuel interests and other trade organizations have the power to argue in court that California’s waiver reduces demand for their products.
Alice Henderson — director and lead counsel for transportation and air at the Environmental Defense Fund, which has helped defend the waiver in court — said California’s auto emissions program is grounded in “a rock-solid legal foundation and decades of precedent.”
California’s clean car standards, which are stricter than those set by the federal government, “have successfully helped reduce the dangerous soot, smog and climate pollution that put all people at risk, while also turbocharging job creation and a strong economy,” Henderson said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in April found that industry challengers and Republican-led states lacked standing to challenge California’s waiver and had failed to show how the courts could address any harm they suffered as a result of the state’s program. (The states filed a separate appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, but the Supreme Court did not address their petition Friday.)
A spokesperson for the California Department of Justice said “we look forward to demonstrating to the Supreme Court that [the D.C. Circuit’s] decision was correct.”
Threats to California’s program
EPA has granted California more than 75 Clean Air Act waivers over the years, with the most recent in 2013.
The Trump administration revoked the waiver in 2019, arguing that the effects of climate change in California were not “sufficiently different” from the rest of the country and that the state did not need its own greenhouse gas standards to meet “compelling and extraordinary conditions.”
The Biden administration reinstated the waiver in 2022, finding that the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw it was based on a “flawed interpretation” of the Clean Air Act.
Today, 17 other states and the District of Columbia have adopted California’s stricter emissions standards.
Conservative groups have long targeted the program, and the incoming Trump administration has threatened to curtail the state’s authority. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has promised to “punch back” in the courts.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing under the incoming Trump administration, stops short of revoking the waiver but calls for it to cover only “California-specific issues like ground-level ozone, not global climate issues.”
It also calls for ensuring that other states adopt California’s standards “only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gases.”
Trump disavowed Project 2025 before the election but later tapped many of the plan’s authors for positions within his administration.
Another conservative wish list for climate rollbacks that has been delivered to Trump’s transition team urges the incoming president to “withdraw the California CO2 waiver that allows California to set tailpipe emissions and de facto national gas mileage standards.”
