California government bureaucrats are calling it the “Advanced Clean Car Rule II,” last August’s update to the state’s previous edict that required all new cars sold here to be all-electric hybrids or plug-in for 2035.
Between now and then, other benchmarks are also set, starting with 35 percent of new cars sold as electric vehicles from 2026, just three years from now.
Since the rule was passed, it has been a topic for people who like to bash California, from Texas to Florida to Ohio. They call it just unrealistic regulation that makes California a very difficult place for business.
But it might not happen. And not just because of doubts about the ability of the state’s electricity grid to cope with all this additional demand.
With little fanfare, more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general the other day filed a new court filing claiming the California measure and the federal law that enabled it are unconstitutional.
The top government lawyers for Texas, Ohio, West Virginia and others say in their lawsuit that the waiver of the 1970 Clean Air Act that gave California the right to regulate smog emissions from cars come here “puts it on an uneven playing field compared to other states.” in violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution,” also granting that state sole power to regulate global climate change.
The Clean Air Act waiver, first signed by then-Republican President Richard Nixon and subsequently renewed by every president except Donald Trump, has been the authority behind many California Air Resources Board edicts. These rulings, starting in the early 1970s, led to innovations such as the first smog control devices, catalytic converters, hybrid cars, hydrogen cars, electric vehicles and plug-ins.
Each move was protested at first by nearly every automaker as either impossible or prohibitively expensive, but all have turned out well.
California’s rules have additional leverage that angers officials in other states for two reasons: 1) California’s auto market is so big that manufacturers who want to sell nationwide think it’s cheaper to do it than everyone else their cars conform to the rules of California that build different models. for different locations, and 2) 16 other states and the District of Columbia now automatically adopt California’s auto rules five years after they go into effect here. These states account for 40 percent of the US vehicle market.
None of this will last if Republican attorneys general get their way. They serve on the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia, from which both judges and cases often go to the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court has been remarkably inconsistent with states’ rights since Trump’s three nominees provided it with a 6-3 conservative majority.
That court has consistently upheld California’s waiver of the Clean Air Act, but never with its current membership, which is dominated by conservative Republicans.
Therefore, the survival of the waiver is not certain, despite the fact that the court puts abortion and other matters back under state jurisdiction. Not from a court whose majority justices took gun policy out of the state’s hands by making its preferences on gun-carrying and other matters apply everywhere.
It is uncertain whether, when this case inevitably comes to them next year or in 2024, Trump-appointed judges will essentially validate his attempt to eliminate California’s unique authority, which has led to millions of cleaner cars and a much cleaner air across the country.
Because the exemption was originally granted by the Nixon administration because of California’s unique geography, with many of its major cities, from Los Angeles to Sacramento to Bakersfield to Fresno, sitting in watersheds where mountains or large mountain ranges hold smog for longer periods than in flatter environments, where any old wind can blow away quickly.
That’s why the air is often dirtier in these California cities than in places like Cincinnati and Seattle, Portland, New Orleans or New York.
Will the Supreme Court recognize that unique environments require unique tactics to preserve their healthy environments? Or the judges will go with states like West Virginia and Texas, which don’t care as much about smog because it doesn’t last long.
At stake here is a continuation of the decline in diseases from lung cancer to emphysema that has paralleled the advent of cleaner cars and light trucks. Whether the majority of the Supreme Court will heed this is not yet known.
Email Elias at tdelias@aol.com
