Missouri is the latest state to join a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s decision to allow California to impose its own more stringent greenhouse gas emission standards and vehicle emissions standards.
Led by Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Missouri joined 16 other states Friday in challenging the Environmental Protection Agency reinstating the California rule.
The Clean Air Act had allowed California to enact its own emissions standards if granted a waiver by the EPA, but the Trump administration had revoked that ability. At the time, then-President Donald Trump said the revocation would lead to safer and cheaper vehicles.
But the EPA in March said the previous administration’s actions were “decided in error and now entirely rescinded.”
The states’ lawsuit contended the EPA could not waive the Clean Air Act preemption for just California because the statute cited to do so violates the states’ equal sovereignty.
“Over 40% of the nation’s motor vehicles are manufactured in California and the 13 other states that follow its emission standards. If California is able to set restrictive ‘gas emissions’ standards, manufacturing becomes astronomically expensive, and those additional costs are passed onto consumers, many of which are Missourians,” Attorney General Schmitt, a candidate for U.S. Senate in the Show-Me State, said.
“The Trump administration understood that, and prohibited California from setting its own oppressive standards,” he continued. “The Biden administration has since repealed the Trump order and given California the go-ahead to set green manufacturing standards, which in reality, crush the average American who is already facing astronomical prices at the pump because of the Biden administration’s failed policies.”
In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, thanked the Biden administration for “righting the reckless wrongs of the Trump administration and recognizing our decades-old authority to protect California and our planet.”
The EPA’s move opened up the ability for other states to adopt California’s standards. email: kschallhorn@newspress.com
