Defiant California Vows Court Battle Over Emission Rules

Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown tells Bloomberg News the state will fight the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze emission limits in 2020 for “longer than Trump has in office” if necessary.

California, a dozen other states and the District of Columbia have already filed a lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to reverse its own earlier decision to implement significantly tougher curbs on carbon dioxide emissions in 2022-2025.

EPA set those regulations during the Obama administration. It concluded that the standards remain “feasible and practical” in a review completed just before President Donald Trump took office 16 months ago.

California’s lawsuit claims that EPA’s policy reversal under the Trump administration is based on ideology rather than science. Brown notes that federal law requires that any changes in the regulations must be based on facts. He insists EPA’s about-face is a whim and therefore “lawless.”

California was granted the power more than four decades ago to set its own emission standards. The state’s regulations have been aligned with federal rules for many years, and carmakers would prefer to keep it that way.