Supreme Court says fuel producers can challenge California emissions restrictions
California’s efforts to control vehicle emissions can be challenged by fuel producers, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The 7 to 2 opinion did not invalidate certain emission standards but said that the companies’ legal effort against the emissions efforts should not have been tossed out by a lower court.
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion.
The Environmental Defense Fund did not see the ruling as a setback.
“The case did not address California’s longstanding Clean Air Act Authority or the merits of the state’s Advanced Clean Car I standards, which are unaltered by the Court’s decision and remain in full force and effect,” it said in a statement.
California’s bid to control emissions got a significant boost in recent years from the federal government. The Biden administration permitted the state tougher exceptions to national standards.
Some of those actions were overturned recently when Congress voted for, and President Donald Trump signed, legislation that invalidated the state’s bid to stop the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. California is now challenging that law in court.
Fuel producers’ successful argument
This case that the Supreme Court decided Friday involved fuel interests, who maintained that by limiting gasoline-powered vehicles, their business would suffer.
A group of producers of gasoline and other liquid fuels sued, arguing California’s regulations reduce the manufacturing of gas-powered cars, which would cause a hit to the fuel producers’ sales.
Kavanaugh noted that the federal Environmental Protection Agency and California “suggest that the new vehicle market has developed in a way that even if the California regulations are invalidated, automakers would not likely manufacture or sell more gasoline-powered cars than they do now.”
But he said, “That is an odd argument for EPA and California to advance. After all, if invalidating the regulations would change nothing in the market, why are EPA and California enforcing and defending the regulations?”
Dissenting were Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson wrote that the court’s willingness to side with the fuel interests were in sharp contrast to “the stern stance it has taken in cases concerning the rights of ordinary citizens.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2025 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Supreme Court says fuel producers can challenge California emissions restrictions."
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