19 States Bring EPA to Court
If you have been following trucking news as of late, you may be familiar with the strict emission regulations that California is planning to implement on the trucking industry. For those who are out of the loop, the short version is that all trucks sold in 2036 must be zero emission, and by 2042 it will be illegal to operate a diesel truck within state borders. Nineteen other states are taking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to court for allowing this to go through.
Details
The states suing the EPA are:
- Iowa (leading the suit).
- Alabama.
- Arkansas.
- Georgia.
- Kansas.
- Kentucky.
- Indiana.
- Louisiana.
- Mississippi.
- Missouri.
- Montana.
- Nebraska.
- North Dakota.
- Oklahoma.
- Ohio.
- South Carolina.
- Utah.
- West Viriginia.
- Wyoming.
“Iowa isn’t going to take a back seat as the EPA and California try to regulate truckers out of business. We’re pushing back,” Brenna Bird, Attorney General of Iowa and person spearheading the lawsuit, announced. “The EPA and California have no right or legal justification to force truckers to follow their radical climate agenda.”
Still Standing?
The real question at the heart of this case involves the concept of “standing”. Do the states in the lawsuit have a personal interest in telling California not to enact its stricter regulations? It is possible to argue that is indeed the case, as any driver from any other state hoping to deliver to California would have to abide by the regulations of the most populous state, making it a de facto regulation for other truckers as well.
Conclusion
We are not judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, however, so our opinion on the legal standing of the lawsuit is not for us to decide. We will have to wait and see what happens regarding this lawsuit, and if it is thrown out, whether or not it will be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court.
One potential workaround California may manage to enact by 2042 is to ban the driving of diesel trucks owned by California businesses within the state’s borders while allowing out-of-state drivers to do it, which would eliminate the issue of standing that may present itself in this case.
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