Car Makers Try and Stop Emissions Suit

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Working Californians blogs]

File this one in the unsurprising development department. The auto industry is moving in court to block California from enforcing its own regulations about tailpipe emissions. Chron:

The legal battle over global warming moved Monday to the Central Valley, where the auto industry tried to convince a federal judge that California's attempt to limit car emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is beyond its authority.

Lawyers for car manufacturers, dealers and trade associations said California's 2002 law, the model for statutes in 11 other states, amounted to a requirement for higher gas mileage, a subject that only the federal government can regulate.

While mileage may be the main thing the car makers need to improve to reduce tailpipe emissions that is not what the law says. Here is another piece of their legal argument, which the judge immediately undercut.

Although federal law allows California to take a lead role in reducing air pollution, Congress never "intended a single state to have such sweeping authority to unilaterally set national fuel economy policy ... and profoundly affect a vital national industry," said Raymond Ludwiszewski, lawyer for a trade group of international automakers.

But U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii suggested that the industry's argument had been undercut by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in April upholding the federal government's authority to limit emissions of greenhouse gases.

Ishii noted that the court - rejecting arguments by the Bush administration as well as the auto industry - found no conflict between the Environmental Protection Agency's duty to regulate air pollutants and federal transportation officials' authority to regulate fuel economy.

"Why would I treat state regulation differently than the EPA adopting regulation of greenhouse gases that affect fuel economy?" Ishii asked. He concluded the two-hour hearing by saying he would rule later.

Not exactly a positive sign for the auto industry. If the judge rules in favor of the state, then it is up to the Bush Administration to grant the waver, as the federal government usually does in these cases, or deny. Given the Bush Administration's approach to the environment, this one is not a given at all.