FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown joined a coalition of 26 state and local governments in filing a lawsuit against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) challenging its final rule weakening corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger cars and light trucks.
Historically, NHTSA’s standards have reduced consumer costs by improving fuel efficiency for vehicles, placed downward pressure on gas prices by reducing fuel consumption, protected the U.S. economy from global oil shocks, and reduced pollution from tailpipes and refineries. However, the final rule significantly weakens fuel economy standards and hurts consumers and the planet.
In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the coalition challenges this unreasonable and unlawful rule. Far from NHTSA’s legal requirement to set fuel economy standards at their “maximum feasible” level, its backsliding standards for the next five years require less efficiency than the U.S. fleet achieved in 2021.
“While Marylanders struggle to pay rising gas prices, the Trump Administration unlawfully weakened standards that would lower the cost of driving,” said Attorney General Brown. “We will not allow this Administration to pad fossil fuel companies’ profits at Marylanders’ expense.”
In 1975, Congress enacted the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which requires NHTSA to establish “maximum feasible” fuel economy standards for new vehicles that reflect technological feasibility, economic practicability, the effect of other motor vehicle standards of the government, and the need to conserve energy. To set fuel economy standards, NHTSA first models the current fleet’s performance and then considers what, if any, additional actions manufacturers could take to improve their fuel economy above that performance in future model years. In past rulemakings, including during the first Trump administration, NHTSA started from a realistic baseline fleet that included the millions of electric vehicles that already existed on the nation’s highways and roads and based fuel economy standards on how additional technological improvements to gas-fueled cars could make that fleet more efficient. NHTSA never based fuel economy standards on “mandating” that automakers produce more electric vehicles or requiring consumers to buy them.
The final rule misinterprets NHTSA’s statutory authority and ignores the presence of millions of electric vehicles in the nation’s existing fleet, leading to a flawed, dramatically distorted analysis of the “maximum feasible” fuel economy level that the auto industry can achieve. Essentially, NHTSA’s reinterpretation of the law renders the federal fuel economy program toothless, unable to protect consumers against rising gas prices or the ongoing global oil disruption.
NHTSA has also utilized defective analyses of vehicle affordability and sales, fleet turnover, fuel savings, and vehicle safety to make a profoundly harmful and destructive rule look net-beneficial to society. For example, NHTSA tries to paper over nearly $220 billion in lost fuel savings. This is money that drivers would have saved at the pump under the previous fuel economy standards, which will instead benefit Big Oil. NHTSA also refuses to consider hundreds of billions of dollars in future damages from disasters driven by climate change, flouting the best science and research and effectively setting these costs at zero. Defying a longstanding and repeatedly affirmed congressional mandate, NHTSA asserts that the United States does not need to conserve energy after all, and it treats high gasoline prices and the instability of global oil markets as an acceptable trade for fossil fuel companies’ profits. Finally, NHTSA’s rule will end the CAFE credit trading program in 2028, which will significantly harm the electric vehicle industry that employs Americans and supports the economy.
In the lawsuit, the coalition alleges that NHTSA’s final rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.
In filing this lawsuit, Attorney General Brown joins the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the City of Chicago, the City and County of Denver, the City of Los Angeles, the City of New York, and the City and County of San Francisco.
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