The dispute centred on an exception granted to California on national vehicle emission standards, allowing it to set stricter rules than federal standards.
The United States Supreme Court has sided with fuel producers that had opposed California’s standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law, agreeing that their legal challenge to the mandates should not have been dismissed.
The justices in a 7-2 ruling on Friday overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit by a Valero Energy subsidiary and fuel industry groups. The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs lacked the required legal standing to challenge a 2022 US Environmental Protection Agency decision to let California set its own regulations.
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision.
The dispute centred on an exception granted to California during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration to national vehicle emission standards set by the agency under the landmark Clean Air Act anti-pollution law.
Though states and municipalities are generally preempted from enacting their own limits, Congress let the EPA waive the preemption rule to let California set certain regulations that are stricter than federal standards.
The EPA’s 2022 action reinstated a waiver for California to set its own tailpipe emissions limits and zero-emission vehicle mandate through 2025, reversing a 2019 decision made during Republican President Donald Trump’s first administration rescinding the waiver.
Valero’s Diamond Alternative Energy and related groups challenged the reinstatement of California’s waiver, arguing that the decision exceeded the EPA’s power under the Clean Air Act and inflicted harm on their bottom line by lowering demand for liquid fuels.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the lawsuit in 2024, finding that the challengers lacked the necessary standing to bring their claims because there was no evidence that a ruling in their favour might affect the decisions of auto manufacturers in a way that would result in fewer electric and more combustion vehicles to be sold.
Sceptical court
California, the most populous US state, has received more than 100 waivers under the Clean Air Act.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken a sceptical view towards broad authority for federal regulatory agencies and has restricted the powers of the EPA in some important rulings in recent years.
In 2024, the court blocked the EPA’s “Good Neighbor” rule aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighbouring states. In 2023, the court hobbled the EPA’s power to protect wetlands and fight water pollution. In 2022, it imposed limits on the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce coal and gas-fired power plant carbon emissions.
