New lawsuit challenges an illegal scheme between California Air Resources Board (CARB) & truck manufacturers designed to enforce intrusive & unlawful regulations for heavy-duty vehicles that sell out manufacturers’ customers and those that depend on them
Washington, D.C. –As California Governor Gavin Newsom continues his quest to “Trump-proof” his state, the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce (AmFree) is taking legal action against his administration’s efforts to ban internal-combustion vehicles in trucks and replace them with technologically inferior battery-electric or fuel-cell-electric powertrains. Specifically, the lawsuit challenges a collusive agreement between the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state agency overseeing the state’s climate change mandates, and certain truck manufacturers designed to evade the federal Clean Air Act and illegally manipulate markets to phase out internal combustion engines in exchange for a steady stream of captive purchasers and taxpayer-funded subsidies and hidden credits.
The suit was filed in the Northern District of Illinois (home of the headquarters of the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, one of the named defendants).
In 2020, Newsom announced a goal that “100 percent of … heavy-duty vehicles in the state be zero-emission by 2045.” Since then, CARB adopted the “Omnibus” rule, the “Advanced Clean Trucks” (ACT) rule, and the “Advanced Clean Fleets” (ACF) rule, which together force vehicle manufacturers to meet increasingly stringent annual market shares of “zero-emission” vehicles as a percentage of their total heavy-duty vehicle sales, culminating in a complete ban on sales of new internal-combustion trucks.
The Clean Air Act prohibits states from regulating new vehicle emissions. And while it gives California a unique ability to obtain “waivers” of this prohibition from EPA, California does not have waivers for the Omnibus rule, ACF, or the current form of ACT.
Instead of respecting the statutory process, California sought to accomplish its goals through the backdoor by bullying manufacturers into the “Clean Truck Partnership” challenged in this case. CARB bureaucrats promised manufacturers some flexibility in exchange for manufacturers’ promise to adhere to California’s electric vehicle mandates “irrespective of the outcome of any litigation that has been filed or may be filed challenging the waivers or authorizations of those regulations or [California] or any state’s overall authority to implement those regulations.”
As the lawsuit explains, the Clean Air Act prohibits states from even “attempt[ing] to enforce any standard relating to the control of emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines” without prior permission from EPA.
“This unholy alliance between Gavin Newsom’s environmental regulators and a cozy cartel of truck manufacturers will drive up prices, reduce choices and harm consumers who will bear the brunt of the regulatory consequences,” said Gentry Collins, Chief Executive Officer of AmFree. “Internal-combustion truck engines are not only the beating hearts of interstate commerce, busy right now delivering Christmas gifts from coast to coast, but also extraordinarily safe and clean. If electric vehicles were truly so advanced, California would not need mandates to force them on unwilling consumers. Governor Newsom may be hell-bent on ignoring the will of more than 77 million voters who spoke last month, but that doesn’t mean he can break the law and create anti-competitive cartels in pursuit of his own green agenda and long-term political objectives.”
The term “heavy-duty vehicles” includes pickup trucks, vans, box trucks, city buses, long-haul trucks, refuse trucks, cement trucks, and more. They are overwhelmingly vans and trucks designed to carry freight or tow heavy loads. Heavy-duty trucks moved over 12 billion tons of freight worth an estimated $11 trillion in 2021, far more than all other modes of transportation put together.