California can continue to impose tighter controls on auto emissions than the rest of the country to clear up the state’s smoggy skies.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, a bid by industry groups to block the state’s authority to supersede federal auto emissions standards has failed. A U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Automobile Dealers Association have no standing to challenge California’s emissions controls.
Because California has had air pollution standards in place since before the passage of the nation’s landmark Clean Air Act in 1970, the state had long been permitted special waivers by the Environmental Protection Agency to impose requirements that surpass federal rules. That changed in 2004, when the George W. Bush administration declined to give California a waiver after the state enacted its own law to reduce planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
The Obama administration came back in 2009 and issued a new waiver, sparking the lawsuit.
At stake in the legal battle was California’s long-term freedom to impose tough standards. The state and the Obama administration already last year worked out a joint plan, which didn’t require a waiver, to engineer a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions in cars through the 2016 model year.
But the state is currently engaged in negotiations with the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on standards for cars through the model year 2025, with environmentalists calling for a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions, as well as fuel efficiency standards of 60 miles per gallon.
The judges based their decision on their belief that neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the auto dealers could demonstrate any economic harm that they would suffer as a result of the California standards. “Because the Chamber has not identified a single member who was or would be injured by EPA’s waiver decision, it lacks standing to raise this challenge,” Judge Merrick B. Garland wrote in his opinion for the District of Columbia appellate court.
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