Texas Leads 14-State Fight On Biden Vehicle Emissions Regs
by Clark Mindock (Law360) A Texas-led group of states is slamming the Biden administration’s push to strengthen greenhouse gas standards for auto emissions, telling the D.C. Circuit on Monday it must intervene and stop a purported federal war on fossil fuels.
The 14-state coalition headed by Lone Star State Attorney General Ken Paxton launched the challenge Monday to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency auto emissions rule, which was finalized in December and aims to strengthen controls on the emissions as a part of President Joe Biden’s broader transportation-focused climate plans.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading the coalition challenging the EPA’s auto emissions rule, which aims to strengthen controls on emissions as part of the Biden administration’s climate policy.
The bare-bones petition simply asks the court “for review of the final action” taken by the EPA and its administrator, Michael S. Regan. But Paxton’s office said in a statement that the president’s “bureaucratic decrees micromanage greenhouse gas emissions” in a way that exceeds the EPA’s authority and violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation-of-powers principles.
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The states joining Texas in the challenge are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.
The greenhouse gas emissions standards in question were proposed in August and finalized in December after the EPA received more than 100,000 comments from a variety of interested parties, a volume that highlighted the importance of the issue and its ability to impact a variety of sectors of the economy and society.
While the Biden administration originally set a cap of 171 grams of carbon dioxide per mile for vehicles by 2026, the finalized rule following those comments lowered that level to just 161 grams per mile. The tightening of emissions allowances came after a concerted effort by the Trump administration to relax earlier emissions standards put in place by the Obama administration.
While red states like Texas have decried the new rate as an attack on industry and fossil fuels, the proposed standard had received the backing of some big players in the automotive industry, including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that includes Ford, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota and many other manufacturers.
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Others, like the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, said that the proposed rule should include more room for biofuels. The American Petroleum Institute also weighed in, but argued that an economy-wide government carbon price policy would be preferable to sector-specific policies like the vehicle emissions rule.
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The case is State of Texas et al. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency et al., case number not immediately available, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. READ MORE
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Excerpt from Reuters: The state of Arizona filed a separate legal challenge. The new EPA rules take effect later this year and require a 28.3% reduction in vehicle emissions through 2026. READ MORE
