Environment — News & Analysis

California sues EPA over bid to nullify vehicle emissions waivers (June 22, 2026)

June 22, 2026 — California filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday, challenging the agency's attempt to nullify four Clean Air Act waivers — granted in 2009, 2013, 2022, and 2024 — that allow the state to enforce vehicle emission standards stricter than federal law.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta argues the EPA is illegally reclassifying these decades-old adjudicatory approvals as "rules" so they can be subjected to review under the Congressional Review Act, a maneuver Bonta calls "an illegal attempt to take down these important tools." The so-called California waiver dates to the 1970s, when Congress carved out an exception in the Clean Air Act allowing California — at the time the only state with its own vehicle emission standards — to address smog over Los Angeles; the provision has since let the state act as a regulatory "laboratory of innovation" for cleaner vehicle technology, with 17 other states adopting similar standards.

Bonta warns that if the EPA's reclassification stands, it would not only strip California's authority to set stricter standards but "eviscerate" the state's ability to contest future revocations of waivers already granted. The fight follows years of what Bonta calls a federal "campaign of hostility" toward the waiver, including the first Trump administration's 2019 revocation of the exception — reversed by President Biden in March 2022 — and a 2022 challenge from 17 Republican-led states and fuel industry groups, which a D.C. Circuit panel unanimously rejected in April 2024, a ruling the Supreme Court later declined to disturb. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment on the new suit.