The growing battle between the federal government and various California trucking-focused environmental initiatives wrapped up a busy August with first, a legal argument that two key pieces of litigation should be kept separate, and two, a more formal step in the federal government pushing back against a portion of the California Clean Truck Check regulation that can affect all trucks doing business in the Golden State.
In the most recent development, the U.S. government, representing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), late last week filed its arguments with the federal district court for the Eastern District for California as to why a lawsuit challenging California’s Clean Truck Partnership (CTP) filed by the group of engine and truck manufacturers who signed the CTP two years ago should remain in that jurisdiction.
The court in the Eastern District had asked for input as to why the lawsuit there should not be moved to California’s Northern District. That latter district already is the site of a lawsuit filed by the state of California challenging Congress’ action to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to yank waivers granted to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) that would allow the state to implement certain regulations that exceed federal standards under the Clean Air Act, specifically, its Omnibus NOx rule and the Advanced Clean Trucks rule.
Fighting on many fronts
It can be difficult to keep up with all the battlegrounds in the broader California vs. Washington fight over just what Sacramento can do to regulate trucking and other forms of emissions more strictly than the rest of the country. It seemed appropriate that the last week of August would bring about new activity in the battle after so many other developments in the standoff throughout the month.
The U.S. filing came in response to a request from the Eastern District seeking reasons why the CTP case in the Eastern District shouldn’t be moved to the Northern District.
The Northern District case filed by the state of California arose from a vote that passed both houses of Congress in June, and was later signed by President Donald Trump, using the CRA to overturn several waivers granted to California by the Environmental Protection Agency.
However, opponents of the move argued that while the CRA could be used to overrule a regulation promulgated by a federal agency, waivers had never been viewed as falling under that Congressional power. Soon after President Trump signed the bill retracting the waivers, California filed its suit in the Northern District.
Because of that suit, the Eastern District bench had asked the parties in its CTP-related suit why the two lawsuits shouldn’t both be in the Northern District.
U.S. wants the venues to stick
The brief filed by the U.S. government in response to the Eastern District request said the two cases should remain in their current venues.
Among their arguments: the parties in the case are different. For example, the plaintiffs in the Eastern District case are a group of truck and engine manufacturers, but they are not part of the case in the Northern District where California is the plaintiff.
Another argument is that since the state’s capital city of Sacramento is in the Eastern district, actions taken by the state government–like the signing of the CTP–should be litigated in that jurisdiction.
“Transferring the case risks effectively denying the United States’ request for injunctive relief to remedy the irreparable harm it suffers from California’s enforcement of preempted standards,” according to the U.S. government’s argument.
But that there are shared impacts crossing over the two cases is undeniable.
The OEMs in the Eastern District are asking the court to stop California from enforcing the provisions of the CTP. The companies signed the CTP in August 2023. The deal rested primarily on the two waivers granted by the EPA that the federal government now argues were effectively killed off in its action under the CRA but which California, in its Northern District action, says was invalid.
One of the waivers approved California’s Omnibus NOx rule, which governs nitrogen oxide emissions. The second permitted adoption of California’s Advanced Clean Truck rule, multi-faceted but broadly aimed at edging out internal combustion engines in favor of zero emission vehicles by the mid 2040’s. The fate of the waivers rests on the outcome of the Northern District lawsuit.
Federal Register notice over Clean Truck Check is published
The other end-August development in the U.S. vs. California standoff was the Environmental Protection Agency making formal in the Federal Register its objections to a state pollution testing requirement, the Clean Truck Check rule, that it has extended to out-of-state vehicles. EPA signaled its intentions prior to the Federal Register posting in late August.
The Federal Register comment period lasts until September 25.
Clean Truck Check requires trucks to download various data on pollutants from its onboard diagnostics twice a year, a requirement that will be rising to four times per year. California also requires any trucks that operate in the state to perform the Clean Truck Check test, even if the test is conducted in another state with the data then submitted to Sacramento.
The Clean Truck Check is part of the State Implementation Plan (SIP) required by EPA for all states. The SIP, according to EPA, is “(related) to the control of emissions from non-gasoline combustion vehicles over 14,000 pounds.”
The EPA’s Federal Register notice signaled it would approve California’s SIP except for the part that requires out-of-state trucks to comply with the Clean Truck Check.
“The EPA has substantial concerns that this aspect of the regulation is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution,” the agency wrote in the notice. “The (Constitution’s) Commerce Clause appears to prohibit the implementation of the regulation because its extraterritorial reach burdens interstate commerce.”
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