These SoCal Clean Air Rules are Being Smeared
Legitimate affordability concerns are being weaponized by the gas lobby and its supporters ahead of an important SCAQMD vote to encourage cleaner appliances.
After years of rule development, Southern California air quality regulators are set to vote tomorrow on a pair of proposals that would reduce harmful pollution from gas furnaces and water heaters. A coordinated campaign by opponents including SoCalGas is painting these relatively moderate rules as a “ban” on gas appliances and an attack on middle-class pocketbooks. Policymakers shouldn’t be swayed by these misleading claims. At issue are Rules 1111 and 1121....
CONTINUE READINGGovernment Hires Shouldn’t Have to Take a MAGA Essay Test
Schedule F was bad, But Trump’s latest move is even worse.
The Trump Administration has adopted new hiring procedures that will impose ideological litmus tests in federal hiring. Job applicants will be graded on essays about their allegiance to “America’s founding principles” and their commitment to implementing Trump’s executive orders. These new essay questions have little to do with the jobs of most government employees and more to do with ideological conformity. I’ll go into more detail below about these quest...
CONTINUE READINGImplications of the Seven County Decision
Possible limitations on NEPA analysis for climate effects and indirect effects
This is the third in our series of posts on the Seven County case. The first post was here, summarizing the key points of the opinion. The second post is here, providing our assessment of the analysis in the opinion. In this third post, we discuss the implications of the case for what have been some of the most significant kinds of indirect effects analyses under NEPA to date. As noted in our first post, the Seven County case has important implications for what ...
CONTINUE READINGSupply-Side Regulations & Clean Vehicles
As Congress votes to undermine California's sovereignty to set supply-side standards on polluting vehicles, CLEE's research shows why these policies are so effective
In May 2025, both the U.S. House and Senate passed resolutions to revoke California’s Clean Air Act waivers, which allow the state to enforce stricter vehicle emissions rules than federal standards (see Ann Carlson’s post on this issue). If signed by the President—and if successful in the face of court challenges to their dubious legality—these resolutions would nullify California’s authority to set stricter vehicle standards, potentially rolling back decad...
CONTINUE READINGA Critical Analysis of the Seven County Opinion
The court’s opinion ignores basic principles of law and statutory text in order to achieve a policy goal.
This is the second in a series of blog posts about the Court’s Seven County opinion. In our first post, we summarized the key points from the opinion. Here, we provide our assessment of the Court’s analysis. The Court’s analysis, especially in Part II.B, where it sets specific limits on the scope of NEPA, relies primarily on two steps. First, it begins with the proposition that the “proposed action” is the basis for NEPA review. Such a starting point...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Lawsuits Now a Matter of Life and Death
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
What a week for watchers of climate litigation. Big new filings, claims of death and destruction, a landmark ruling, and a juicy hearing all in the span of 36 hours. First, there was what the New York Times described as “the first wrongful death lawsuit” to be brought against oil and gas companies over claims that they deceived the public about climate change and caused dangerous global warming — in this case related to the 2021 heat dome in the Pacific No...
CONTINUE READINGCould Zero-Emission Hydrogen Help Reduce Aviation Emissions in California?
State’s federally funded hydrogen hub releases aviation whitepaper co-led by CLEE.
Few industries face as complex a challenge in decarbonizing as aviation. While great for decarbonizing on-road transportation, batteries are generally too heavy to power long-distance flights. Low-carbon biofuels blended into fossil jet fuel represent only a partial solution, due to lack of feedstocks and blend limits. Zero-emission hydrogen could represent a solution, either as an ingredient for synthetic jet fuel that can drop in as a replacement for fossil jet fuel or...
CONTINUE READINGThe Outcome of the Seven Counties Case
Court emphasizes agency discretion and judicial deference in NEPA.
The Supreme Court issued its decision today in the Seven County NEPA case (available here). For background on the case, see our prior posts here, here, here, and here, as well as our article. In this post, we’ll provide a brief overview of the opinion. Next, we’ll undertake a brief analysis of the Court’s reasoning in our second post. After that, our final post will explore what we think the likely implications of the opinion are for NEPA compliance by feer...
CONTINUE READINGLeft NIMBYs Strike Out Yet Again
The Urban Institute study that they cite as evidence for stopping housing does not say what they claim.
The recent publication of Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s Abundance has the Alt-Left NIMBYs out in force. Again. Outraged by Klein and Thompson’s call for zoning reform, they argue that zoning reform has nothing to do with housing affordability. That’s their standard line. What isn’t standard is their reliance on a quality peer-reviewed study from the Urban Institute to back up their claims. Citation to this study as a way fighting housing has now appeared in...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Rollbacks: Will the Trump Administration Overplay Its Hand?
The odds are good that Trump agencies will go too far out on a limb.
It’s no secret that Trump is likely to roll back as many environmental regulations as he possibly can, starting with the Biden Administration’s climate rules. In pursuit of that goal, he has pushed agencies to adopt high-risk legal arguments for rollbacks rather than more reliable strategies. But he may run into a serious roadblock, given that in May the Administration lost in 26 out of 27 district court rulings. Before May, Trump was losing about two-thirds ...
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