California
The Trump Administration Just Released Its Proposal to Eviscerate Car Standards, Revoke California Authority
The Legal Grounds For Doing So Are Dubious At Best
As expected, the Trump Administration has released its proposal that recommends freezing combined fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards at 2020 levels for model years 2021-2025. The proposal also recommends revoking the waiver EPA granted California in 2013 to issue its own greenhouse gas emissions standards and to continue the state’s program to gradually increase …
CONTINUE READINGWeakening Vehicle Standards Ignores Decades of Successful Innovation in Emissions Control
EPA appears poised to abdicate their responsibility to protect public health
As my colleague Ann Carlson explained, the EPA is expected to announce a catastrophic rollback this week to freeze national vehicle emission and fuel economy standards and challenge California’s authority to set their own, more stringent standards. The Trump EPA’s decision to weaken the vehicle standards despite thorough midterm reviews by both the Obama-era EPA and California that …
CONTINUE READINGWheeler EPA Looking to Freeze Auto Standards, Revoke California Waiver
Lawsuits will follow
According to a Bloomberg report this morning, the Trump Administration, under new EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, will release a proposal later this week to freeze greenhouse gas emission and fuel economy standards at 2020 levels. The effect is that automakers will face standards of about 35 miles per gallon rather than seeing the standards increase …
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CONTINUE READINGPreviewing California’s November 2018 Environmental Ballot Measures
Wide Array of Important Environmental Questions Confront California Voters
California’s Secretary of State has certified 12 ballot measures (“propositions,” in California election parlance) to appear on the state’s November 6, 2018 general election ballot. Many of those propositions–indeed, fully half of the dozen measures with which state voters will be confronted this fall–involve important environmental policy and legal questions. I’ll write in greater detail …
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CONTINUE READINGHot Enough Yet?
Apparently not.
Two weeks ago, my family vacation took us past the self-proclaimed “world’s largest thermometer,” in Baker, California, which read 111 degrees when we visited it–the hottest air temperature my kids had ever felt. Back at UCLA we’re feeling the heat today, too, with much of the LA basin scorching in record temperatures. L.A.’s heat wave …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Supreme Court Rejects Ploy to Limit the Legislature’s Authority to Enact Technology-Forcing Statutes
Court rules for the State in challenge to technology-forcing gun control law
In a case I previewed here, the California Supreme Court has been considering a challenge to a gun control law passed in 2007 that required certain new models of guns use a developing technology called “microstamping” that would enable law enforcement to link a spent cartridge back to the gun that fired it. The gun …
CONTINUE READINGHere we go again…
Two more proposals to provide CEQA relief to sports stadiums
It’s another legislative season in Sacramento, so yet another opportunity for legislators to hand out regulatory goodies to large corporations and wealthy people, in the form of CEQA “streamlining” for the construction of sports stadiums. There are two bills currently in the queue: AB 734 which would benefit the Oakland A’s and AB 987 which …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Does Sports Gambling Have To Do With Environmental Law?
A Lot, Potentially, Following the Supreme Court’s Murphy v. NCAA Decision
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a major decision invalidating a federal statute that had prohibited states from allowing betting on competitive sporting events. Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, is one of those relatively rare Supreme Court decisions that directly affects a substantial portion of the American public. So it’s no great surprise that …
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CONTINUE READINGCARB Seeks to Maintain Stringency of California’s Vehicle Standards
Emmett Institute submits public comment in support of CARB’s efforts
Back in the halcyon days of 2012 when EPA, NHTSA, California, and the automakers crafted a grand bargain to adopt national vehicle emission standards, California agreed that compliance with vehicle emission standards adopted at the federal level would be “deemed to comply” with California’s standards. Now, as it becomes clear that the federal government intends …
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CONTINUE READINGAttempting to Close the Floodgates of Litigation
Can Congress prevent state and federal courts from hearing WaterFix lawsuits?
The journey of California’s proposed delta tunnels project (also known as California WaterFix) has been anything but straightforward and already faces a slew of ongoing legal challenges.[i] Last week, Congress added a different kind of twist when the proposed Department of Interior budget for FY 2019 was introduced in the House Appropriations Committee. The relevant …
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