Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Plans to Kill California’s Higher Emissions Standards
WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – A federal judge blocked the Trump Administration's attempts to unilaterally deny Clean Air Act waivers submitted by California to have higher emissions standards than required under federal law by unlawfully recategorizing the requests when sharing them with Congress.
"This is no run-of-the-mill challenge to agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act ('APA'), 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq. At stake in this case is purposeful agency action to tell Congress one thing while operating differently elsewhere, with the purpose of invoking a legal mechanism that could halt future efforts by the agency itself, as well as California and other States, to control emissions of air pollutants and ensure cleaner air," explained U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Wednesday's decision. "The central problem for EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] is that the waivers themselves explicitly state that they are not rules, while the CRA [Congressional Review Act] limits invocation of this statute only to agency rules of general applicability, which EPA, in its own words, has emphatically stated Clean Air Act waiver orders are not. This forces on EPA the dilemma of admitting either that 'agency action' within the meaning of the APA occurred when EPA reclassified the waivers as rules of general applicability subject to the CRA, or that the agency simply labeled the waivers as rules in reports to Congress, despite EPA consistently expressing the view that these waivers, in fact, did not meet the prerequisite under the CRA of a rule of general applicability—with the latter choice raising the obvious specter of the current EPA Administrator having submitted misleading reports to Congress."
Section 209 of the Clean Air Act allows states, like California, to request a waiver of the federal preemption the same law created about allowable vehicle emission levels that might be different, even higher or more stringent, than federal standards.
California has used this process to receive over 100 federal preemption waivers for its vehicle emission requirements and, as of 2025, 17 states and Washington D.C. have adopted the golden state's emissions standards.
Those waivers can be denied by Congress under the authority of the Congressional Review Act which allows the legislative branch to reject certain federal agency actions if a 60-vote threshold is met.
An expedited process, with a lower vote requirement, can be implemented if the Senate Parliamentarian -an unelected, nonpartisan interpreter of Senate rules- determines the request is technically a rule under federal law.
The Senate Parliamentarian affirmed that California's waiver requests were not entitled to the expedited process described above after the Environmental Protection Agency submitted three California waiver requests as rules in an attempt to subject those waivers to a lower, 51-vote threshold.
In February of last year, EPA Administrator Zeldin explained the more stringent emissions standards requested by California, and likely implemented by other states, would increase the cost of vehicles and announced his "Powering the Great American Comeback" initiative that sought to balance the statutory mission of the EPA and other federal laws with plans to energize the nation's economy.
None of California's prior waiver requests had been considered rules and subject to the lower vote threshold in the history of the Clean Air Act of 1967 noted Senator Padilla's Office last year.
"In the intervening half century since Congress created a preemption waiver process for California in the CAA [Clean Air Act], EPA has denied California a waiver in full only once, and California has
continued its efforts to eliminate various types of air pollution without federal roadblocks," explained Wednesday's decision. "This historical practice was disrupted in February 2025, when EPA reclassified three of California's waiver orders, granted between 2023 and 2024 and already in effect, as 'rules' subject to submission to Congress for review under the Congressional Review Act".
Nevertheless, House Republicans voted to revoke three of California's waivers despite a determination by the Government Accountability Office that the waivers were not technically rules in the lower chamber in May of last year setting up the show down over the waiver applications in the Senate.
"Here, for the first time in the history of the CRA [Congressional Review Act], an agency submitted matters that they knew were not rules. Some of my Republican colleagues are now arguing that the Parliamentarian should have no role to limit this partisan gamesmanship, and the Senate should throw out the rulebook and overturn the Parliamentarian," argued Senator Padilla last year. "If the Trump EPA and Senate Republicans are successful at this ploy, the Senate will have no choice but to accept this as status quo in the future. This would grant agencies unchecked control over the Senate floor — an unprecedented encroachment by the executive branch into the Senate's internal operations."
The attempts to circumvent federal law and Congressional procedures unilaterally ended up in federal court when California's Attorney General filed suit about the waivers in June of this year.
In response, the Trump Administration argued that the waivers were always rules -despite the history of the Clean Air Act- that the reclassification did not impact California, and it was not an agency action subject to judicial review.
"EPA and its petroleum trade association intervenor defendants invite this Court to engage in Orwellian doublethink, offering two explanations simultaneously for what the agency has done: first, EPA just determined, despite its prior determinations to the contrary, that the four waivers should be reclassified and treated as 'rules' and so were submitted to Congress, pursuant to the CRA [Congressional Review Act], but also, second, EPA merely sent a report to Congress, and no reclassification of the waivers as 'rules' occurred at all and thus no rights have been effected of California and other States, which have adopted regulatory programs in reliance on the waiver orders," noted U.S. District Judge Howell. "Given that the CRA requires agencies' submission to Congress of only certain types of 'rules,' these two explanations are irreconcilable. In other words, EPA urges that the Court pay no attention to the language of the waiver decisions themselves or to the statutory definitions provided under the APA [Administrative Procedures Act] and CRA [Congressional Review Act], and certainly pay no attention to what the agency tells Congress".
"This fundamental disagreement, with EPA denying doing anything other than submitting a report to Congress and California focusing on the reclassification of waivers from orders to 'rules' to meet the prerequisite for invoking the CRA [Congressional Review Act] process, is easily resolved by looking at EPA's own statements," U.S. District Judge Howell continued in Wednesday's preliminary injunction. "EPA's decisions to reclassify these waivers as 'rules' were critical and meant something. Agency action either results in a rule under the APA [Administrative Procedures Act] or not, and EPA cannot say one thing to Congress while ignoring any consequence from reclassifying these waivers as rules".
Judge Howell then explained the impact of the dispute if allowed to continue.
"Fudging what is or is not a 'rule' subject to that statute can work both ways, both to expand, as here, the types of agency actions subject to congressional review, or to remove agency actions from congressional review. Such gamesmanship may seem like a clever policy move, but undermines honest compliance with the law, which is what Americans should expect from executive branch agencies."
Ultimately, the federal judge found that California had ground to file suit, demonstrated irreparable harm by the agency action, and ordered that the EPA "withdraw or correct" their reclassifications of the multiple Clean Air Act waivers lawfully submitted by California.
Judge Howell further enjoined the agency from further attempts to reclassify the waivers as rules and submit a status report about steps implemented to comply with the federal court's decision by Sep. 21 of this year.
"When it comes to environmental integrity, posterity demands that we act. The bottom line is that California is taking many steps forward to protect the environment and public health while President Trump is taking six steps back," argued California Attorney General Rob Bonta. "For 50 years, both Democratic and Republican administrations have upheld California's authority to enforce state emission standards, but this administration thinks it can roll back the clock and sow chaos even while our lawsuit plays out in court. Today's [Wednesday's] decision is a key victory that rebuffs President Trump's prior efforts. Federal emission standards should be a baseline to protect our future, not a ceiling to limit it."
