The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals snuffed out a California city’s ban on new natural gas hookups on April 17, handing restaurant owners and cooks their first victory over the national climate-action movement.
Judge Patrick Bumatay reversed a district court’s dismissal of a California Restaurant Association’s lawsuit alleging federal law overruled the City of Berkeley’s ban on installing natural gas pipes in newly constructed buildings.
Bumatay found the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act trumps city laws concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in households and restaurants.
“By its plain text and structure, [the federal act’s] preemption provision encompasses building codes that regulate natural gas use by covered products,” Bumatay wrote in his opinion. “And by preventing such appliances from using natural gas, the new building code does exactly that.”
In 2019, Berkeley became the first U.S. city to ban gas stove hook-ups. The ordinance took effect Jan. 1, 2020. The move has inspired similar bans in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and other progressive cities.
Berkeley’s ordinance attempted to bypass the federal law by enacting a new building code that prohibited installing natural gas pipes in new buildings, rendering gas appliances useless, according to Bumatay.
Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain and Judge Miller Baker agreed with Bumatay’s ruling.
Berkeley City Attorney Farimah Faiz Brown told The Epoch Times the city was “evaluating the decision and its next steps.”
“As we face a climate and air quality crisis from coast to coast, it is vital that cities and states maintain all legal pathways to protect public health, cut climate emissions, and increase safety by addressing pollution from buildings, and we’ll continue to fight to ensure this authority is preserved,” Vespa said in a statement.
The association, which represents nearly 22,000 restaurant locations in the state, applauded the ruling on Monday.
The lawsuit challenged the practice of banning gas stoves in cities across California, the attorneys said.
The California Restaurant Association—the largest nonprofit statewide restaurant trade group in the nation—claimed its members included restaurants that relied on gas for cooking particular types of food, and for heating space and water, for backup power, and affordable power.
Without it, they would “be unable to prepare any of their specialties without natural gas,” the association said in the complaint, according to attorneys.
A lower court dismissed the complaint in July 2021, disagreeing on the restaurant association’s interpretation of federal energy law.