California leads multistate coalition lawsuit against Trump administration's effort to weaken fuel efficiency standards

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is leading a multistate coalition in filing suit against the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in an effort to stop the Trump administration’s rollback of national fuel economy standards. The petition was filed on May 27 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and is widely expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The petition seeks judicial review of the Safe Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Years 2021-2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks as well as EPA’s Mid-Term Evaluation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Model Year 2022-2025 Light-Duty Vehicles. These regulations are the culmination of the Trump administration’s efforts to rollback clean fuel standards, weakening a prior 2012 standard that required improvement in the average fuel economy of cars and trucks to about 54 miles per gallon by 2025 and replacing it with a standard that would only require about 40 miles per gallon.

The D.C. Circuit will consider whether, as the coalition alleges, the agencies’ rollbacks violate the statutory text and congressional mandates they are bound by and whether the agencies improperly relied on a shoddy analysis to justify their change in course. In his comments regarding the suit, Becerra called the new SAFE rule “a job-killer and public health hazard” because of predicted job losses and increased air pollution as a result of the curtailed standards.

The Trump administration has claimed that the rule will result in more affordable cars and decreased car crashes, but Becerra and the coalition, along with many economists and environmental groups, dispute these claims as do former EPA employees. The alleged deficiencies are significant, including math errors, confusion of basic economic principles, and misleading predictive modeling. EPA’s own Science Advisory Board cast significant doubt on the administration’s claims, stating that “the standards in the 2012 rule might provide a better outcome for society than the proposed revision.” (Science Advisory Board, Letter to Andrew Wheeler, EPA administrator, Science Advisory Board (SAB) Consideration of the Scientific and Technical Basis of the EPA’s Proposed Rule titled the Safe Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Years 2021-2026).

The board even went so far as to note that the Department of Transportation’s underlying analysis generated “implausible results.” Errors and deficiencies that improperly influence agency decision-making are potentially determinative factors for a court in deciding whether the agencies’ reversal was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. See Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) (“an agency rule would be arbitrary and capricious if the agency has relied on factors which Congress has not intended it to consider, entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, offered an explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency, or is so implausible that it could not be ascribed to a difference in view or the product of agency expertise”) If the coalition can show that the agencies relied on a flawed analysis in issuing the SAFE rule, the suit is likely to have some success.

All this, despite the fact that automakers were already on track to meet or exceed the 2012 standards by 2025. In an unusual move, four automakers (Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen) agreed last year to continue to follow the lead of California and 13 other states attempting to uphold tougher fuel economy standards than those set by the federal government. However, the Trump administration has also pushed back against California’s authority to set those higher standards, by revoking California’s Clean Air Act preemption waiver and passing regulations intended to preempt states from setting higher fuel economy standards. Becerra has filed suit to prevent those Administration actions as well. In fact, Becerra’s office noted that the suit filed last week is the 82nd suit filed by California against the Trump administration, the majority of which are related to environmental and climate change policies. 