WA joins coalition challenging federal fuel efficiency rollback
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is unlawfully weakening fuel economy standards for new passenger cars and light trucks, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and a multistate coalition argued in a new lawsuit.
Historically, the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards have reduced consumer costs by improving fuel efficiency for vehicles, lowered gas prices by reducing fuel consumption, reduced the consumer impact from global oil shocks, and slashed pollution from tailpipes and refineries. However, a final rule from NHTSA significantly weakens fuel economy standards and hurts consumers and the planet.
“This unlawful gift to fossil fuel companies will force Washingtonians to accept greater pollution and higher costs,” Brown said. “Consumers and communities will suffer the consequences if we don’t stop the administration’s action.”
In the lawsuit filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the coalition alleges the unlawful new rule goes against the NHTSA’s mandate from Congress to set fuel economy standards at their “maximum feasible” level. NHTSA’s backsliding standards for the next five years require less efficiency than what the U.S. fleet actually achieved in 2021.
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 in future model years. In past rulemaking, including during the first Trump administration, NHTSA’s analysis included the millions of electric vehicles on our 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.
The final rule improperly forces the agency to ignore that methodology to create an artificially low “maximum feasible” fuel economy level for the auto industry. The end result means auto makers would be allowed to slow down their efforts to make vehicles that use less fuel, hurting consumers who are already struggling with high gas prices from the unending global oil shock caused by President Trump’s war against Iran.
NHTSA has also used defective analyses of vehicle affordability and sales, fleet turnover, fuel savings, and vehicle safety to make a destructive rule look beneficial to society. For example, NHTSA tries to paper over nearly $220 billion in lost fuel savings — money that drivers would have saved at the pump under the previous fuel economy standards, which will instead benefit Big Oil. It also refuses to consider hundreds of billions of dollars in future damages from disasters stemming from climate change.
In today’s 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, Brown joins the attorneys general of California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, 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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