(The Center Square) – Immediately after President Donald Trump signed a congressional bill overturning California’s 2035 gasoline-powered car ban, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the state to continue with the phased-in ban. And California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit to stop the ban from being overturned.
“We won’t let this illegal action by Trump and Republicans in the pockets of polluters stand in the way of commonsense policy to clean our air, protect the health of our kids and compete on the global stage,” said Newsom in a statement. “I’m signing an executive order to keep California on track with our world-leading transition to cleaner cars.”
California Republicans say this standard is unrealistic and that the infrastructure — and funding — do not exist to meet the governor’s standards.
“California faces many challenges in reaching another unrealistic goal set by the governor. These include not enough energy capacity, poor infrastructure, and too few public electric charging stations,” said state Sen. Transportation Committee Vice Chair Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, to The Center Square. “Currently, we need at least 2.1 million public charging stations to meet the earlier mandate, and California has fewer than 200,000.”
These standards have been adopted in part or in whole in 17 states, with the Advanced Clean Cars II passenger vehicle regulations, which ban the sale of new gasoline-powered in 2035, adopted by 12 states, including California, and the District of Columbia. This ban would have impacted 40% of the nation’s car market due to the concentration of the American population in these states.
Because California’s vehicle emissions regulations — created to combat the state’s notorious and toxic smog — predated the EPA, the state has been allowed to regulate its own emissions, so long as it receives a waiver from the EPA for each standard more stringent than the federal standard.
These waivers are necessary because under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, federal law preempts state law. When it comes to air regulations, states are allowed to opt in to California’s standard or the national standard.
Republicans invoked the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn executive agency regulatory decisions within 60 legislative days, to overturn the Biden administration EPA’s December waiver for California’s phased-in ban on new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles, which would take full effect in 2035.
Under ACC II, EV requirements kick in starting in the 2026 model year, which includes many vehicles on sale right now. Thirty-five percent of automakers’ 2026 model year vehicles sold in California and other states that adopted the full ACC II standards and schedule must be plug-in-hybrids or electric vehicles to comply with the program. For each vehicle they are short, automakers can buy credits from other automakers with excess credits, or pay a $10,000 fine for each credit they are short.
With EV market share as a portion of new car sales declining even in California, which leads in national EV adoption, and EV market share in California at just 20.8%, qualifying vehicle sales would need to increase 68% practically overnight to meet the state’s standard.
Given Trump’s overturning of ACC II, it’s likely other states may be barred from implementing the policy. However, Newsom’s order reaffirming his earlier executive order N-79-20 could complicate things.
N-79-20, issued in 2020, required the California Air Resources Board to create regulations requiring that new passenger vehicles and commercial freight trucks to be 100% zero-emission by 2035, and the state’s heavy duty vehicles to be 100% zero-mission by 2035. N-79-29 also ordered California’s agencies to create regulations that ensure the state will meet its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2045.
Bonta’s lawsuit supporting California’s emissions standards includes all 11 other states that had signed on to ACC II, including Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Bonta’s suit says the CRA states its power can only be used on federal agency rules of general applicability, and that California’s waiver is a matter of specific applicability to California.
Combined, Newsom’s order and Bonta’s suit create a major challenge against the Trump administration, reflecting how the opposition party generally leans upon the courts to slow what has been steady growth of government power over time.
