California, 16 other states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday sued the Environmental Protection Agency for moving to weaken federal fuel-economy standards.
The one-paragraph petition asks the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review an April 13 EPA notice withdrawing the Obama administration's mid-term evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions targets for model years 2022-25 light-duty vehicles.
The 16 other states are Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
The rules for corporate average fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions impact automakers' decisions about vehicle body weights, engine specifications, and promotion of hybrid and electric vehicles.
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Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat-California, said EPA would be "inviting additional lawsuits" if it continues down the path of weakening the standards.
"The 1,200-page technical analysis found the current standards were working and at a much lower cost for the car manufacturers," she said in a statement. "There simply is no acceptable justification for throwing the analysis out in order to roll back the standards."
California holds a waiver from EPA allowing it to set stricter standards than the federal limit through model year 2025, and a dozen states and the District of Columbia follow California's lead.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has said publicly he was still examining whether to revoke California's waiver, but press reports over the weekend indicated he was prepared to do so.
California Governor Jerry Brown said last month that the state will not back down from its stronger-than-federal fuel-economy standards in a fight with the Trump administration, because it can win on the legal and economic fronts.
"The idea that we're going to roll back the auto standards is absurd," Brown said at the National Press Club in Washington. "We're not going to do that.
"One very important reason why we're not going to is because China's not doing it. China is the biggest auto market, and California is the biggest auto market in America. Between California and China, Mr. Pruitt has met his match. It's not going to happen."
In January 2017, the EPA determined ahead of schedule and in the final days of the Obama administration that US automakers are meeting the targets quicker and at lower costs than expected, leaving the industry more than able to meet the 2025 goal of 54.5 mpg for the nationwide fleet average. The original deadline was April 2018.
A major aluminum components manufacturer told S&P Global Platts last year that US automakers have invested too much in so-called "lightweighting" of the vehicle fleet to abandon the trend, no matter what the Trump administration does with the CAFE standards.
