A legal challenge to the waiver granted by the Environmental Protection Agency allowing implementation of California’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule is on hold.
On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the challenge pending, while two other cases involving EPA emissions actions work their way through the federal court system.
These cases are Ohio v. EPA and Texas v. EPA. The Ohio case, which has a long list of other red-state plaintiffs, challenged the EPA’s ability to grant California a waiver allowing it to implement emissions standards that exceed federal rules. The states filed suit in May 2022.
Texas v. EPA challenges the federal government’s ability to enforce stricter motor vehicle emissions standards. Peter Zalzal, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the intervenors in the case, told FreightWaves that “the bottom line is there is really a challenge to the EPA’s ability to review electric vehicles and set standards under Section 202 of the the fresh air”. He said a decision from the District of Columbia court could be issued in a matter of weeks, though it could take months.
The Texas suit does not directly address the California rule. Filed in November 2022.
Both the Ohio and Texas cases were heard in September in District of Columbia court, the same venue where the lawsuit filed by lead plaintiff Western States Trucking Association (WSTA) challenging the ACT waiver. This lawsuit has other plaintiffs and a wide range of states who have signed on as interveners, either supporting the WSTA effort or defending EPA and its waiver powers.
In a brief order issued Thursday, the District of Columbia court ordered the WSTA case stayed pending the resolution of Ohio v. EPA and Texas v. EPA.
The EPA had requested the suspension on November 24. In that request, the agency said documents submitted by the plaintiffs in the WSTA case “now show that the vast majority of the issues presented in this case are, in fact, already before the Court in Ohio v. EPA and Texas v. EPA”.
“The resolution of these two cases could essentially decide or narrow the issues in this [the WSTA] case,” the EPA wrote.
The Advanced Clean Trucks rule is a mandate for OEMs and their sales in the Golden State. ACT calls for zero-emission vehicles to account for 55% of Class 2b-3 truck sales, 75% of Class 4-8 truck sales and 40% of Class 7-8 tractor sales by 2035. After that, there is a 100% ZEV sales requirement from 2036.
California’s separate Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule is considered a companion regulation to ACT, as it mandates ZEV composition on fleets as opposed to the ACT mandate for in-state truck sales. The California Air Resources Board just last month submitted a waiver request to the EPA for the ACF after a dispute over whether such a waiver was necessary.
The filing of the waiver request for the ACF rule came several weeks after the California Trucking Association filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California challenging the implementation of the ACF, saying CARB needed a waiver to issue the rule.
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