Colorado on Thursday joined California and other states in suing the EPA and President Donald Trump to preserve electric vehicle sales mandates meant to clean the air and cut greenhouse gases, after Trump signed Congressional resolutions that effectively canceled the programs.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and other attorneys general sued in federal district court for northern California, calling the Congressional resolutions an illegal abuse of national powers and an attack on the well-established Clean Air Act.
The resolutions wiped out EPA waivers granted to California and copycat states to require far more clean car sales than minimums set at the federal level. Colorado’s mandate says 82% of new cars offered for sale here must have zero emissions by model year 2032.
Trump signed the resolutions in a televised ceremony Thursday morning, saying, “We officially rescue the U.S. auto industry from destruction by terminating California’s electric vehicle mandate, once and for all.” Colorado and more than a dozen other states following California’s lead had adopted clean car minimums — as well as subsequent clean heavy truck minimums.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and leaders from other states had already vowed to fight back.
“The Trump administration’s attack on clean air is breathtaking,” Weiser said in a statement Thursday. “Rolling back the federal Clean Air Act waivers through the illegal use of the Congressional Review Act is an assault on the authority of states, like Colorado, to adopt stronger tailpipe pollution limits than those set by the federal government. We’re in court to defend Colorado’s cost-effective clean car program, which was implemented to improve air quality, reduce harmful ozone pollution, and increase choices that Coloradans have when purchasing an electric vehicle.”
The states’ lawsuit claims the Congressional Review Act only allows Congress to overturn rules made by federal agencies, not state laws like the California and Colorado laws on electric vehicles and a separate law requiring sharp cuts to nitrogen oxide pollution produced by heavy-duty truck engines.
The EPA has in the past said congressional review does not apply to the waivers, Weiser and the attorneys general said.
“The federal government ran roughshod over federalism and separation of powers principles,” the lawsuit says. “In fact, the Congressional Review Act has never before been used in any context that resembles this one. It has certainly never been used, as it was here, to negate particular state laws.”
This is a breaking news story that will be updated.
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