Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has joined a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to stop the Biden administration from imposing an electric-vehicle mandate on truck manufacturers.
A coalition of 24 states teamed up in Nebraska v. EPA to challenge the new rule.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ bureaucrats in D.C. want everyone in Louisiana to drive an electric vehicle or frankly no cars at all – and now they want to transform the trucking industry to require an ‘electric-truck mandate,’” Murrill said. “This would only raise prices even more for industries and consumers throughout our state and country.
“Once again, these bureaucrats continue to make decisions without Congressional approval. I stand with Louisiana citizens to make their own decisions about what type of vehicle they want to buy and drive.”
In April, the U.S. Environmental and Protection Agency published a rule imposing stringent tailpipe emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles that effectively force manufacturers to produce more electric trucks and fewer internal-combustion trucks.
The Attorneys General argued that EPA’s electric-truck mandate raises a “major question” that Congress has not clearly authorized EPA to decide. The brief points out that just 0.10 percent of all heavy-duty trucks sold today are powered by a battery, but that EPA’s rule would increase that number to 45 percent in less than a decade away.
The coalition says that massive shift in the nation’s trucking and logistics industries will slow down the transportation of essential goods, stress the electric grid, and raise prices for Americans.
The brief also argues that EPA has never before forced manufacturers to produce heavy-duty electric vehicles and that allowing the electric-truck mandate to stand would short circuit the ongoing policy debate that should be left to Congress and the States.
In addition to Murrill, attorneys general from the following states joined the Nebraska-led brief against the Biden Administration: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Last month, many of the same AGs joined a multistate comment letter asking the EPA to maintain a federal legal block on California’s Advanced Clean Fleets regulation that attempts to impose an electric-truck mandate on fleet owners, operators, and manufacturers—including trucking companies that drive one truck for as little as one day per year in California.
The 24-state coalition argues that the EPA should not allow California to exceed its statutory and regulatory authority by implementing an electric-vehicle mandate that is sure to disrupt the Nation’s logistics and transportation industries.
Under the Clean Air Act, only the federal government can set emissions standards for vehicles. After California asked the EPA for a waiver to enforce Advanced Clean Fleets, the EPA solicited comments on whether to allow California to implement its regulation.
The coalition’s comment argues that granting a waiver would be unconstitutional because it would permit California to regulate motor vehicles in a way that none of the other states can.
The comment also argues that nothing in federal law permits California or the EPA to ban internal-combustion vehicles altogether. Given California’s large population and access to ports for international trade, should the EPA allow Advanced Clean Fleets to be enforced, the regulation will have significant nationwide effects on the supply chain.