California vows revenge after Senate kills EV emissions waiver; Environmentalists sue over national monuments reductions

Plus, NYC's climate law wins in court and the EPA sends a Clean Water Act warning

Photo courtesy Ivan Radic via Flickr.

A defiant California has pledged to file a lawsuit after Republicans in the U.S. Senate broke with precedent and voted to nullify a waiver that allows the state to set stricter vehicle air emissions than the federal standard.

The threat from the country’s largest state came shortly after Republicans on Thursday voted 51 to 44 to overturn California’s Clean Air Act waiver via the Congressional Review Act (CRA) — despite determinations by the Senate parliamentarian and Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the waiver isn’t a rule subject to repeal under that law.

The vote and impending lawsuit set the stage for a legal showdown that experts have told Landmark is essentially unprecedented: The CRA, which allows lawmakers in a newly-formed Congress the ability to quickly nullify recent rules, does not have a judicial review provision.

And while the CRA and GAO determinations are non-binding, it is extremely rare for the Senate to ignore their guidance.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement that “this reckless misuse of the Congressional Review Act is unlawful,” and characterized the vote as Senate Republicans “bending the knee” to President Donald Trump.

“The weaponization of the Congressional Review Act to attack California’s waivers is just another part of the continuous, partisan campaign against California’s efforts to protect the public and the planet from harmful pollution,” he said.

The House had voted in April to nullify the waiver, which was granted under a specific provision of the Clean Air Act (CAA) that gives California the ability to seek permission to establish stricter pollution limits than the national standards.

California, which has big-picture plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions 85% by 2045, has received such approval numerous times in recent decades. The CAA also allows other states to adopt California’s standards, and 13 have done so.

While the national standards are the only ones that technically apply in most states, many say the sheer size of California’s economy alongside those of other states make its regulations a de-facto national standard.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

• NYC’s climate law survives court challenge: The New York State Court of Appeals — the highest court in the state — ruled that a New York City law that requires reductions in building emissions is not preempted by state law. The decision is a major win for proponents of Local Law 97, which seeks to reduce emissions from large buildings in the city by 40% by 2030. The law had been challenged by building and real estate owners.
  

• EPA sends Clean Water Act warning shot to blue states, tribes: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin published a memorandum “clarifying the specific and limited role that states and tribes play in the federal licensing and permitting processes under Clean Water Act (CWA) section 401.”
  
  Section 401 requires developers and other applicants for federal permits to apply for licenses to demonstrate that they won’t significantly damage water quality.
  The memo aligns the EPA with the positions taken by fossil fuel interests, which unsuccessfully challenged a Biden-era CWA rule that expanded the power of states and tribes to veto infrastructure projects using Section 401 over broad water quality impacts including impacts to fish habitat or impacts from runoff. The first Trump administration had finalized its own rule that limited review to only direct discharges of pollution from things like pipes.
  
  Industry said the Biden rule exceeded the EPA’s authority under the CWA, and that states like New York had inappropriately cited climate change impacts — which can cause indirect water quality concerns — when denying a permit to build a natural gas pipeline.

• National monuments legal fight starts over coral reef habitat: Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners and environmentalists filed a lawsuit challenging an order by Trump that would open up parts of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.
  
  The monument, which includes pristine coral reefs and small islands near Hawaii, was first designated under the Antiquities Act in 2009 and then expanded in 2014. The lawsuit claims that the Antiquities Act gives a president power to designate or expand national monuments — but not shrink them. Watch out for this argument should the Trump administration target other national monuments (it’s the same argument that was used when the first Trump administration tried to shrink Bears Ears National Monument in Utah).
  
  The lawsuit also made more technical arguments that the Interior and Commerce Departments violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Magnuson-Stevens Act and the Endangered Species Act when they implemented the order.
  

• Trump admin sides with Texas in BlackRock ESG fight: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice, as the country’s antitrust enforcers, expressed support for a lawsuit Texas filed last year alleging investment funds BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street illegally conspired to drive down coal production as a part of an industry drive for “net zero” standards. The firms, which manage a collective $27 trillion for investors, are currently seeking to dismiss the lawsuit and have called the case half-baked (they also maintain substantial fossil fuel investments and have reduced their focus on environmental concerns in recent years).
  

• Environmentalists want a piece of the blue state electric vehicle funding fight: Non-profit environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and others asked to join a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s funding freeze of $5 billion in electric vehicle grants. The main lawsuit was filed earlier this month by a coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general.