The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider whether business groups may challenge an unusual federal program that lets California set its own limits on tailpipe emissions to combat climate change.
The groups, including fuel producers and sellers, told the justices that the court’s intervention was needed to prevent California from effectively setting national policy. “Without this court’s immediate review,” their petition seeking review said, “California’s unlawful standards will continue to dictate the composition of the nation’s automobile market.”
The challengers asked the court to decide two questions: whether they had suffered the sort of injuries that gave them standing to sue and whether the Environmental Protection Agency program granting California a waiver to set its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions was lawful.
The court agreed to decide only the first question, on standing, and did not act on a separate petition from 17 states asking the court to rule on whether Congress had violated the Constitution in empowering the E.P.A. to give California a special status.
The law authorizes the E.P.A. to grant California a waiver from nationwide standards even though other states and localities are not free to set their own limits. In their petition, the challengers said the law improperly deputizes California to act as a “junior-varsity E.P.A.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in an unsigned opinion in April, rejected the lawsuit, ruling that the challengers lacked standing. The appeals court reasoned that fuel producers would not be directly harmed by the waiver, which directly affects vehicle manufacturers.
The California waiver, created under the 1970 Clean Air Act, has for decades served as a tool to allow the state, which has historically had the most polluted air in the nation, to enact tougher state-level clean air standards than those set by the federal government.
The waiver can be used to rein in toxic, smog-causing pollutants like soot, nitrogen dioxide and ozone that lead to asthma and lung disease. But in the 21st century, California rule makers have used the waiver to curb emissions like carbon dioxide — the invisible greenhouse gas emitted by burning coal and oil that is the chief cause of global warming.
Because the tailpipes of gasoline-powered cars are the nation’s largest source of carbon dioxide pollution, California’s use of the waiver to address that pollution soon grew into one of the nation’s, and then the world’s, most transformative and ambitious programs to fight climate change by transitioning away from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles.
In recent years, California’s use of the waiver to help curb greenhouse gases from automobiles has spread to about a dozen other states, making up nearly half the U.S. auto market. It has influenced the policies of other governments, including the European Union and Canada, and it has helped compel global automakers to invest heavily in developing and selling electric vehicles.
All of which has made it into a ripe political target for Republicans, led by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who promised to “rip up” the California waiver as part of his broader battle to destroy policies intended to combat climate change. During his first term, Mr. Trump revoked an Obama-era version of the California waiver.
As soon as next week, the Biden administration is expected to release a waiver allowing California and at least a dozen other states to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars after 2035, the most assertive use of the policy to date. Mr. Trump, in turn, has promised to revoke that waiver in his first days on office — but if the challengers ultimately prevail, the policy could permanently be put to death.
“If the waiver is taken away, it would make it more difficult for the nation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions,” said Peter Slowik, an expert on vehicle emissions policy with the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonpartisan research organization.
Margo Oge, who served as the top vehicle emissions regulator at the E.P.A. under three presidents, said she was wary of the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly blocked environmental initiatives.
“If the waiver for greenhouse gases is eliminated, it will slow down adoption of E.V.s,” Ms. Oge, the author of “Driving the Future,” said about the market for electric vehicles. “It’s going to be bad.”
Though the challenge is narrow and procedural, it is being viewed in California government circles as an ominous sign over the longer term for the state’s tough pollution restrictions. If the court sides with fuel producers, state climate experts point out, the likely next step by the oil industry would be to file a substantive challenge to the law.
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