A Pennsylvania trucking company has signed on to challenge the stranglehold awarded by federal law to California over vehicle emissions standards in Pennsylvania and over more than 40% of the U.S., despite the voters of those states having virtually no chance to influence those making those decisions.
On March 7, the owners of trucking firm H.R. Ewell joined their names to a petition filed with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court review an order entered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January in the waning days of the administration of former President Joe Biden, granting a waiver under the Clean Air Act to the state of California to implement its so-called Advanced Clean Cars II vehicle emissions standards.
The trucking company is joined in the petition by industry groups including the Western States Trucking Association; the California Fuels and Convenience Alliance; California Asphalt Pavement Association; New York Construction Materials Association; and the Associated General Contractors of New York State.
The petitioners are represented in the action by attorneys from the nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation.
“Our Revolution was fought to throw off a faraway government - in which we had no representation - but the federal government cheated off King George’s homework when it created the Clean Air Act,” said Luke Wake, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
“Forcing businesses to submit to rules written by California bureaucrats 3,000 miles away is blatantly unconstitutional and allows the federal government to escape accountability for the fallout. We are asking the court to strike down this regulatory scheme because California shouldn’t be enabled to create federally enforceable standards.”
The so-called "Advanced Clean Cars" standards ostensibly would impose stringent regulations onto automobiles sold in California, seekingto eventually force every vehicle sold in the state to be "zero emission" by 2035, in the name of fighting so-called "climate change" allegedly cause, in large part, by so-called "greenhouse gas" emissions form the exhaust of petroleum powered vehicles.
Since the 1960s, from the earliest days of the landmark federal Clean Air Act, California secured a special waiver from federal vehicle emissions standards, allowing the Golden State to impose stricter regulations than those required by federal law.
In granting California the expanded authority, the federal EPA said the waiver was needed to allow California the regulatory flexibility to address its supposedly unique pollution problems, exacerbated by its geography and the large number of vehicles on its roadways.
In the decades since, other states have been given the opportunity to either abide by federal tailpipe emissions standards or adopt rules matching California's. To date, 17 other states and the District of Columbia have adopted California's emissions standards and goals. Those states include Pennsylvania, as well as Colorado, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Washington and Oregon, among others.
However, as California's economy and population has grown in the ensuing decades, its buying power relative to the rest of the country has essentially allowed California the outsized power to set vehicle emission standards for the rest of the country, and much of the world.
Automakers would neither make vehicles that would be unique to California, but neither would they willingly surrender the ability to sell cars in the Golden State's massive markets.
The standards and the waiver have been challenged elsewhere, including by the administration of President Trump during his first term and, of late, by a group of Republican-led states and business interests.
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in April on the question of whether the challengers have the ability to sue.
California has argued only Congress can revoke its waiver, as it was granted under a provison of the Clean Air Act itself.
Just before Biden left office, his EPA reinstated the waiver, triggering the new petition for review before the Ninth Circuit, even as the other challenges continue elsewhere.
In the new challenge, the Pacific Legal Foundation said the H.R. Ewell trucking company will note his company is automatically subjected California's emission standards, as Pennsylvania regulations automatically adopt each revision to California's standards for heavy-diesel engine emissions.
"This puts H.R. Ewell at the mercy of California's regulators in perpetuity," the Pacific Legal Foundation said.
The Foundation noted that a separate group of truckers are also challenging Pennsylvania's automatic adoption of California standards in Pennsylvania court.
"Only Congress can make federal law," the Pacific Legal Foundation said in its statement announcing the petition for review. "Handing state governments, or anyone else, the power to create federally enforceable regulatory standards violates the nondelegation doctrine. Allowing California to set federal standards puts businesses under the thumb of elected officials of a state where they do not live and might not even do business."