California Court Deals Blow to CARB
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has been in the news a lot lately, as it dishes out regulation after regulation in pursuit of cleaner air and less global warming/climate change.
It has suffered a slight obstacle in its pursuit of its mission, as a California trial court has ruled that one of the regulations is unenforceable on a technicality.
Details
The regulation in question is a $30 fee for registering transportation refrigeration units (TRU) in a database. The court ruled that this was a conflict of interest that the regulatory agency collecting the money was the same as that which was enforcing the regulation.
“At first glance it is a bit startling to learn an unelected body could demand a fee from the persons they will also be regulating,” Judge Robert Michael Whalen Jr. said in the court’s decision. “One need look no further than our Nation’s founding document to realize we are a people offended by the idea of unelected officials taking money from people within our community.”
The important thing to take from this is that the courts did not rule against the idea of a database tracking the emissions of TRUs itself (a form of the regulation has existed in California since 2004), but was against the idea of drivers and fleets being charged for the “privilege” of doing so. Effectively, the court ruled it as a “tax” that was an undue burden of doing business, with the potential conflict of interest from CARB both administering and collecting the fee being the cherry on top of the entire debacle.
Conclusion
So what happens next in this TRU saga? It appears CARB ultimately has three options as to what it can do: it may either appeal to a higher court, will still require the database entry at no cost to the drivers and fleets, or drop the whole required registration altogether. It will be interesting to see what decision CARB makes moving forward, and if they opt for the second option, from where they will obtain the extra funding needed to maintain the database.
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