The Supreme Court sided Friday with oil companies seeking to challenge California’s electric vehicle regulations.
In a 7-2 ruling, the court allowed energy producers to continue their lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to approve California regulations that require manufacturing more electric vehicles.
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence before the Court of Appeals, the fuel producers established Article III standing to challenge EPA’s approval of the California regulations.”
Kavanaugh noted that “EPA has repeatedly altered its legal position on whether the Clean Air Act authorizes California regulations targeting greenhouse-gas emissions from new motor vehicles” between Presidential administrations.
“This case involves California’s 2012 request for EPA approval of new California regulations,” he wrote. “As relevant here, those regulations generally require automakers (i) to limit average greenhouse-gas emissions across their fleets of new motor vehicles sold in the State and (ii) to manufacture a certain percentage of electric vehicles as part of their vehicle fleets.”
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals previously rejected the challenge, finding the producers lacked standing to sue.
“The Supreme Court put to rest any question about whether fuel manufacturers have a right to challenge unlawful electric vehicle mandates,” American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) President and CEO Chet Thompson said in a statement.
“California’s EV mandates are unlawful and bad for our country,” he said. “Congress did not give California special authority to regulate greenhouse gases, mandate electric vehicles or ban new gas car sales—all of which the state has attempted to do through its intentional misreading of statute.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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