On Thursday, June 30, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and ten other Attorneys General filed a petition for review at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) corporate average fuel economy standards (CAFÉ) for certain cars and light trucks.
“The Biden Administration is stretching its statutory authority in an effort to pursue a radical climate change agenda,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch. “It is vital that we rein in President Biden’s radical environmental views, which put America’s economic growth and job creation in jeopardy, especially now when Americans are struggling to move forward against Washington’s inflationary headwinds. It is equally vital that we provide a check to the Administration’s rampant overreach, whether it is related to its climate change agenda, universal vaccination policies, or any other area of important public policy. If Congress has not granted the Administration the authority to act, federal agencies cannot just will it to be so.”
The petition was filed by the states of Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
The petition comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s repudiation of unfettered EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases in West Virginia v. EPA. In that case, the Supreme Court found that the EPA’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gases through sweeping industry-wide changes embodied in the Obama-era Clean Power Plan violate the “major questions” doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress wants to give an administrative agency power to make decisions of “vast economic and political significance,” it must clearly state so. That challenge to the Clean Power Plan was brought by the nineteen states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
