The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark
FILE PHOTO
Joins a coalition of 26 states, counties and cities
MONTPELIER – Attorney General Charity Clark today joined a coalition of 26 states, counties, and cities in filing a lawsuit against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) challenging its final rule weakening Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger cars and light trucks. Historically, NHTSA’s standards have reduced consumer costs by improving fuel efficiency for vehicles, placed downward pressure on gas prices by reducing fuel consumption, protected the U.S. economy from global oil shocks, and reduced pollution from tailpipes and refineries. However, the final rule significantly weakens fuel economy standards and hurts consumers and the planet.
“Fuel economy standards help protect Vermont families from the costs and consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Attorney General Clark. “We are challenging this unlawful rollback because Vermonters deserve a federal government that follows the law and protects their interests.”
In 1975, Congress enacted the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which requires NHTSA to establish “maximum feasible” fuel economy standards for new vehicles that reflect various factors including technological feasibility, economic practicability, and the need to conserve energy. To set fuel economy standards, NHTSA first models the current fleet’s performance and then considers what, if any, additional actions manufacturers could take to improve fuel economy. In past rulemakings, including during the first Trump Administration, NHTSA started from a realistic baseline fleet that included the millions of electric vehicles that already existed on our nation’s roads and based fuel-economy standards on how improvements to gas-fueled cars could make that fleet more efficient.
But the final rule adopts a novel reinterpretation of the law and improperly forces the agency to ignore the presence of millions of electric vehicles in the nation’s existing fleet, leading to a flawed, dramatically distorted analysis of the “maximum feasible” fuel economy level. Essentially, NHTSA’s novel reinterpretation of the law renders the federal fuel-economy program toothless, unable to protect consumers against rising gas prices or the ongoing global oil shock from President Trump’s war.
NHTSA also used defective analyses of vehicle affordability and sales, fleet turnover, fuel savings, and vehicle safety to make a profoundly harmful and destructive rule look net-beneficial to society.
For example, NHTSA tries to paper over nearly $220 billion in lost fuel savings — money that drivers would have saved at the pump under the previous fuel economy standards. It also refuses to consider hundreds of billions of dollars in future damages from climate change-driven disasters, flouting the best science and effectively setting these costs at zero. Defying a longstanding Congressional mandate, NHTSA also asserts that the United States does not need to conserve energy after all — treating high gasoline prices and the instability of global oil markets as acceptable. Finally, NHTSA’s rule will end the CAFE credit trading program in 2028, which will significantly harm electric vehicle industries that employ Americans and support the economy.
In today’s lawsuit, the coalition alleges that NHTSA’s final rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.
In filing this lawsuit, Attorney General Clark joins the attorneys general of California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, as well as the City of Chicago, the City and County of Denver, the City of New York, and the City and County of San Francisco.