House Republicans move to stop California from setting its own vehicle pollution standards

The US House of Representatives voted to revoke California’s ability to enact its own, tougher pollution regulations for cars and heavy-duty trucks. 

It’s an attempt to kill one of the nation’s most ambitious climate plans and strip California of its ability to set stricter tailpipe pollution standards than the nation as a whole. But it’s not clear that Republicans are even on sound legal footing in trying to stop the state from enacting its own rules.

“This vote is an unprecedented and reckless attack on states’ legal authority to address the tailpipe pollution causing asthma, lung disease and heart conditions,” Kathy Harris, director of clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a press release. “If other states don’t like California’s approach, they don’t need to follow it. But Congress shouldn’t intervene and try to block state leaders from protecting their residents from dangerous pollution.”

Back in December, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a waiver approving California’s plan to require all new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emission by 2035. Resolutions passed by the House Wednesday and Thursday aim to reverse that approval, as well as similar waivers the EPA granted California for regulations limiting nitrogen oxide pollution and requiring an increasing number of medium and heavy-duty vehicles to be zero emission.  

Resolutions the House passed this week still have to make it through the Senate, teeing up a fight over whether Congress even has the authority take away the approvals. The Senate parliamentarian and Government Accountability Office (GAO) have previously said that Congress can’t use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to revoke waivers the EPA issues to California. The CRA allows Congress to overturn certain new rules with a simple majority vote; what’s in question is whether it applies to waivers that the GAO and parliamentarian don’t consider recent rules within the parameters of the CRA.

The 1970 Clean Air Act allowed California to set its own tailpipe emission standards because of higher pollution levels in the state. And because the Golden State has a larger economy than most other countries in the world, the standards it has set for vehicle manufacturers over the years have swayed the entire industry and influenced other governments. At least 11 other states including New York and Oregon have adopted similar climate laws incentivizing electric vehicle sales. 

Carmakers criticized the Biden administration’s December approval of that plan — one of the most ambitious climate targets in the nation — writing that they expected Donald Trump to revoke the waiver. During his first term in office, President Trump similarly tried to take away California’s authority to set its own emissions standards for cars, but was unsuccessful.

“Most of the states that follow California are NOT ready for these requirements. Achieving the sales mandates under current market realities will take a miracle,” John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation that includes Ford, GM, Honda and others, wrote in a December press release.