The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and supporting parties have filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its challenge to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) waiver for California to mandate electric vehicles (EVs).
In 2022, the EPA granted California a waiver to set its own emission standards and to adopt a zero-emission-vehicle mandate. Many states have followed California’s lead, adopting those same standards.
The California regulations require 35% of new vehicles sold in the state to be zero emission by 2025, with that percentage increasing to 70% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.
“EPA should not have made California’s vehicle technology mandate a standard across much of the nation,” said Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives at NACS. “We need innovations to improve all vehicle technologies to fight climate change. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, this rule will stop a great deal of internal combustion engine innovation in its tracks. The Court should take this case and restore sanity to our system of regulating vehicle emissions.”
Fuel producers challenged EPA’s waiver, but the D.C. Circuit rejected the challenge, concluding that vacating EPA’s waiver would have any effect on automakers.
The questions presented in the petition, or writ of certiorari, are:
- Whether a party may establish the redressability component, which concerns whether the court system can provide the relief the group asked for if it wins the case.
- Whether EPA’s preemption waiver for California’s greenhouse-gas emission standards and zero-emission-vehicle mandate is unlawful.
Separately, in June, NACS filed petitions with a coalition of energy and fuel producers, energy marketers and retailers and consumer groups with the D.C. Circuit Court to sue the EPA over its regulation that will effectively ban most new gas cars and trucks in less than eight years, as well as the EPA’s regulations that will create mandates for the sale of electric trucks.
The two petitions filed are challenging EPA’s light-, medium-duty vehicle and heavy-duty vehicle standards for model years 2027-2032, according to NACS.
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