EDF Joins Dozens of Other Leaders to Defend EPA’s Clean Car Standards in Court

(Washington, D.C. – March 21, 2023) A massive coalition of health, environmental and civic groups – including Environmental Defense Fund – laid out a full-throated defense of EPA’s clean car standards in a brief filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

“EPA’s clean car standards are protecting people from the climate crisis and unhealthy air pollution while also creating jobs and saving people money at the gas pump,” said EDF clean transportation attorney Andy Su. “The clean car standards continue EPA’s decades-long work to protect people from transportation pollution, as required by Congress, and they have a rock-solid foundation in our nation’s clean air laws.”

EPA finalized protective clean car standards in December 2021. The standards, which correct damaging actions by the last administration, apply to model year 2023 to 2026 new cars and passenger trucks. They will help the U.S. address the climate crisis, provide healthier air for our communities, create new manufacturing jobs, and become global leaders in the race to zero-emitting vehicles. A group of states – led by the Texas Attorney General – and fossil fuel companies filed a lawsuit challenging them. EDF intervened in the case in defense of the standards.

Today EDF joined other parties to the case – the American Lung Association, Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Law & Policy Center, National Parks Conservation Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, and Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as 22 states and cities with whom we filed a joint intervenor brief – and a large and varied group of organizations and experts – the American Thoracic Society, American Medical Association, American Public Health Association, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association for Respiratory Care, Climate Psychiatry Alliance, American College of Physicians, American College of Chest Physicians, Academic Pediatric Association,  American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, Constitutional Accountability Center, Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, Senator Tom Carper and U.S. Representative Frank Pallone, Jr., Margo Oge and John Hannon,  the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Consumer Reports, and the International Council on Clean Transportation –  who filed amicus briefs in support of the EPA’s clean car standards.

The joint intervenor brief argues that EPA’s clean car standards are “a straightforward exercise of EPA’s authority under Section 202(a),” (Brief, page 6) saying:

“Since 1965, federal motor vehicle standards under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act have been a cornerstone of Congress’s efforts to prevent dangerous air pollution. Section 202 tasks EPA with regulating new motor vehicles — one of the nation’s largest sources of air pollution — and has empowered EPA to eliminate billions of tons of smog precursors, soot, and greenhouse gases from the nation’s air by encouraging the application of cost-effective emission-control technologies. The emission standards challenged here continue this work using longstanding, statutorily authorized regulatory approaches.” (Brief, page 1)

The brief then details how:

• EPA’s clean car standards for model year 2023 to 2026 cars and passenger trucks fit “squarely within EPA’s Section 202(a) authority” (Brief, page 6)
• Section 202 (a) is “one of the most significant and frequently exercised authorizations in the Clean Air Act” (Brief, page 20)
• EPA’s clean car standards are “consistent with longstanding regulatory practice and core agency expertise” (Brief, page 21)
• Congress provided clear authorization for the standards (Brief, page 28)

Other parties to the case also filed briefs in support of the clean car standards today, including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation – a group that represents the manufacturers of 98% of the vehicles regulated by EPA’s standards. The Alliance’s brief expresses the manufacturers view that:

“Section 202 (a) of the Clean Air Act grants EPA significant discretion to establish emissions standards and to include regulatory provisions to incentivize game-changing technologies, like electric vehicles, that do not have widespread market adoption. EPA has exercised that discretion for more than a decade in setting greenhouse gas standards and, apart from an increase in the stringency of the standards, there are no salient differences between the Final Rule and its predecessors. Indeed, the features of the Final Rule to which Petitioners most strenuously object — its use of averaging and application to electric vehicles — are longstanding and fully supported by [section] 202(a)’s plain meaning.” (Alliance for Automotive Innovation brief, page 1)

Clean cars and trucks have already launched an auto manufacturing renaissance in the U.S. A new report by EDF and WSP found more than $120 billion in investments and 143,000 new U.S. jobs in clean transportation have been announced in the last eight years. You can read that report here.

You can find all legal briefs in this case, and other cases challenging clean car and truck standards, on EDF’s website.