With the first requirements of California’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule set to go into effect in just a few weeks, the California Trucking Association (CTA) has asked a federal court to block implementation of the regulation.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, seeks both a preliminary and permanent injunction to stop the California Air Resources Board (CARB) from enforcing the rule.
CTA officials have hinted in recent months that such a suit may be coming.
The CTA argues that California exceeded its authority in creating the ACF. The rule mandates the phase-out of internal combustion engines (ICE) in trucks by 2040. However, under a more pressing timeline, no ICE-engined trucks could be added to the state’s drain registry after Jan. 1, 2024. It must are zero emission vehicles (ZEVs).
CTA’s arguments are:
- ACF is in violation of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A), which happens to be a key argument used by the CTA in its lawsuit to block the state’s independent contractor law, AB5, from applying to its trucking sector California. F4A, a law dating back to the early 1990s, prevents a state from passing a regulation that affects a “price, route or service” offered by a trucking company.
The other claims in the lawsuit are generally related in one way or another to these two reviews and essentially argue that California far exceeded its authority in passing the ACF.
“Instead of providing assurance of clear and compliant regulations, the California Air Resources Board has issued the ACF regulations, which extend California’s regulatory authority far beyond its borders and establish such untenable mandates that CARB itself has already been forced to informally promise certain provisions. not to be enforced,” the CTA lawsuit states. CARB’s actions “represent a massive overreach that threatens the safety and predictability of the nation’s freight industry.”
The lawsuit notes that ACF may have had a path toward legal federal approval. But, as he notes, “EPA can, but has not, granted a waiver to CARB to adopt and enforce a regulation like the ACF. While CARB may assert otherwise, ACF cannot be enforced until such a waiver is granted.”
As for the CTA’s charge that the ACF violates F4A, the CTA says the ACF “creates exactly the type of disarray that F4A was designed to avoid, as car carriers must modify their services and routes to support ZEVs within and outside of California. The impact of ACF’s demands on the nation’s logistics industry would be nothing short of devastating.”
The CTA says in the lawsuit that a state can implement its own requirements for the sale of vehicles within its borders, “but only when those mandates strictly comply with federal requirements.” It mentions a provision of the Clean Air Act: the Clean Fuel Fleet Program (CFFP). But CTA says there are stricter guidelines under the CFFP about what a state can do than CARB has adopted in the ACF, in defiance of what it says was “Congress’ careful calibrated balance between federal and state authority regarding fleet vehicle emissions’.
The CTA’s arguments regarding federal supremacy take several forms.
“At no time has the Legislature given CARB, or Congress to EPA, the authority to adopt a regulation with such sweeping effect on the California economy and because of the interstate nature of California’s trucking industry, the national economy,” argues the CTA. .
This passage is subject to a request for relief because of the CTA’s view that the Clean Air Act preempts the ACF rule. But the issue of federal supremacy looms large throughout the trial.
CTA rips CARB for confusion with its claim that ACF is violating due process. “ACF does not present a clear regulatory system that can be understood by regulated parties, not even by CARB itself,” the lawsuit states. “The voluminous ACF rulemaking record demonstrates the clear confusion that regulated parties have regarding their understanding of their obligations under the rule.”
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