The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a case seeking to challenge California’s ability to set tighter car emissions standards than the EPA.
The challenge from a group of energy companies and trade groups is to the agency’s waiver giving California the ability to set tighter standards than the rest of the country under the law known as the Clean Air Act. The case is part of a long-running legal battle over California’s ability to set its own environmental standards.
The justices on Friday granted review of only part of the challenge: over whether the companies and trade groups can continue their case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had previously tossed it. The high court will likely issue a decision before the end of the court’s term in June.
Several states are separately asking the Supreme Court to take their own case against California’s waiver. The justices have yet to say whether they will do so.
The case now on the Supreme Court’s docket — Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. EPA — has its roots in the state’s latest emissions plan, which received the latest EPA waiver in 2022. The state readopted fuel emissions standards under the waiver that runs through 2025. The agency gave an initial waiver in 2013, but the Trump administration revoked it in 2019.
The challengers argued that climate change is not a uniquely California problem, and that the legal waiver portion of the clean air statute is meant to allow the state to set its own standards to handle unique pollution problems.
They have “serious constitutional concerns with a statute that allows only California to act as a junior-varsity EPA,” the challengers said, citing a 2022 Supreme Court decision restricting how agencies could act on “major questions” of political and economic significance without a clear statement from Congress.
California and the Biden administration have defended the waiver, arguing that the justices should not disturb the balance Congress set up when it passed the law.
The Biden administration argued in its Supreme Court filing that the energy companies and other trade groups could not prove how they would be harmed by the state’s standards because they didn’t present evidence that automakers would reduce reliance on liquid fuel in response to the standards.
The administration has previously said that automakers have entered into agreements with California regulators to reduce their emissions separate from the general standards.
California defended its standards in its own court filing, arguing that the EPA and the state adopted rules that complied with Congress’ vision when it passed the Clean Air Act.
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