Florida AG Leads Coalition of 25 States Suing Biden Admin Over Emissions Rule

Traffic moves along the Interstate 76 highway in Philadelphia, on March 31, 2021. Matt Rourke/AP Photo

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is leading a 25-state coalition in suing the Biden administration over its new emissions regulations, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from lightweight vehicles and stimulate electric vehicle (EV) sales.

The lawsuit argues that the new emissions rule—proposed on April 23, 2023, finalized on March 20, 2024, and published in the Federal Register on April 18—exceeds the agency’s statutory authority.

Joining in the lawsuit are the attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The EPA’s new rules are designed to cut tailpipe emissions from cars and light trucks by almost 50 percent relative to 2026 levels by 2032 and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 7.2 billion tons through the year 2055.

The EPA notes that the biggest contributor to GHG is the transportation sector, representing 29 percent of total GHG emissions in the United States. The largest contributors of GHG within the transportation sector are light-duty vehicles, putting out about 58 percent of the emissions sector-wide and about 16.5 percent of America’s total GHG.

The EPA also suggests that the reduction in emissions from motor vehicles—which is linked to serious health problems, such as respiratory and cardiovascular illness, and cancer—will ultimately result in “substantial improvements in public health and welfare.”

“Addressing these public health and welfare needs will require substantial additional reductions in criteria pollutants and GHG emissions from the transportation sector,” the agency added.

Attorneys general in the coalition argue that the new emissions standards demonstrate the administration’s capitulation to the demands of environmental activists, indicative of a socialist regime that forces the public to purchase products they neither want nor can afford.

Ms. Moody calls the new rule unrealistic, ill-timed, and unwelcome.

“Biden’s EPA continues to push radical Green New Deal policies at a time when the infrastructure is not in place and Americans are struggling economically due to Biden-created inflation,” she said in an April 18 press release.

“We continue to fight Biden’s short-sighted and out-of-touch policies, taking legal action today to protect Americans from these outrageous emissions standards,” she said.

‘Flies in the Face of the Free Market’

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said in a statement that the “disconnect between this administration and the American people could not be more apparent.” He noted how neither the public nor the infrastructure are prepared for such a “massive shift” toward the dominant use of EVs.

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said forcing manufacturers to produce EVs and forcing Americans to purchase them is “a basic pillar of a socialist centrally planned economy.”

“It flies in the face of the free market where the best products should be supported by the demand of the consumer, not the narrow agendas of environmental activists pulling the puppet strings of the Biden Administration,“ he said, adding that ”Idaho drivers aren’t buying the cars, and they aren’t buying the excuses.”

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is seen in a file photograph. Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

The EPA said the industry could meet the standards of the new rule if 56 percent of new vehicle sales are electric by 2032, along with having at least 13 percent of all EVs as plug-in hybrids or other partially electric cars. The current rate of all-electric vehicles is around six percent. Hybrids account for about eight percent and plug-in hybrids make up about two percent of EV car sales.

Citing many problems inherent in the president’s plans, and the additional losses to be suffered by manufacturers being forced to comply with his regulations, the petitioners in the coalition are asking the court to “declare unlawful and vacate the agency’s final action.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the EPA for comment.

Not the First Time

At the direction of Congress, the EPA has been setting emissions standards for motor vehicles since 1971. The earliest standards, for light-duty vehicles for hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide, required a 90 percent reduction in emissions.

This is not the first time a collection of Republican attorneys general have combined forces to use the legal system as a means to challenge the various iterations of the Biden administration’s climate agenda.

In March, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey led a coalition of Republican attorneys general in 10 states in filing a lawsuit to block the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new rules requiring companies to disclose their carbon emissions and their activities to “mitigate or adapt to a material climate-related risk.”

Republican attorneys general from 21 states sued the Biden administration on Dec. 21, 2023, in an effort to block a finalized federal rule requiring states to set targets to reduce GHG emissions from transportation at the state level as part of the administration’s goal to have net-zero emissions by 2050.

In May 2022, a coalition of 17 Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration over the EPA’s March 9, 2022, announcement that it was restoring California’s authority to set and enforce its own GHG emission standards, revoked by President Donald Trump’s Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule.

On April 22, 2021, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry led a group of 10 Republican AGs in a lawsuit over an alleged violation of the Administrative Procedures Act by President Joe Biden when he issued an executive order restoring Obama-era calculated values for an analytical tool called the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, values said to “reflect the best available science” that “work towards approaches that take account of climate risk, environmental justice, and intergenerational equity.”

A survey released by Gallup on April 8 showed that fewer Americans (35 percent) said they might consider buying an EV. That’s down from the 2023 rate of 43 percent.

Almost half (48 percent) said they would not buy an electric vehicle, up from the 41 percent who said the same the year before. The number of people saying they are seriously considering the purchase of an EV dropped from 43 percent in 2023 to 35 percent.