Date Filed: September 15, 2025
Original Court: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
Case Status: Pending
CAF filed a motion to intervene in California v. United States (N.D. Cal. No. 4:25-cv-04966) on behalf of our clients Western States Trucking Association and Construction Industry Air Quality Coalition. This case is related to California’s electric vehicle mandate. In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order banning all gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. The California Legislature never voted on this mandate. Instead, the California Air Resources Board issued regulations to enforce this mandate. Beginning in 2035, California will prohibit selling gas-powered cars. It will also require all heavy duty trucks after model year 2035 to be electric vehicles.
Congress passed the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions and provide uniform federal standards for vehicle manufacturers. However, Congress provided a special exemption for California. That exemption allows the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to waive federal preemption of California’s emission standards if those standards address “compelling and extraordinary conditions” in California. Without these EPA waivers, California cannot enforce its EV mandate.
The Biden EPA granted California’s waivers for trucks and cars in April 2023 and January 2025, respectively. (CAF previously filed a lawsuit in June 2023 challenging the EV mandate for trucks.) When EPA approved the waivers, it skipped a legally required step: submitting the waivers to Congress under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The Trump Administration corrected this mistake by submitting the waivers to Congress in February 2025. A few months later, Congress passed resolutions of disapproval to repeal EPA’s waivers. The President then signed them into law. Without the waivers, federal law preempts California’s EV mandate.
Now California is suing to invalidate those resolutions of disapproval, thereby reviving the EPA waivers and allowing California to enforce its EV mandate. California argues that EPA’s waivers are not rules that are subject to the CRA. CAF attorneys argue that EPA’s waivers are properly considered rules because they have purely forward-looking effects on a broad category of unidentified individuals. CAF is also arguing that California cannot judicially enforce the Senate’s filibuster rule. The resolutions of disapproval passed by a majority vote in both Houses of Congress, and the President signed them into law. That is all the Constitution requires to enact a law.
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