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California sued the Trump government on Friday forcing it to provide data backing its repeal of California 's vehicle emission standards, dubbed "radical" by California.
California's Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed a lawsuit with the US District Court in Columbia for disclosure of documents from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that justify his intention to weaken fuel economy regulations.
Becerra claims that the Trump administration agencies failed to comply with the state's request for freedom of information legislation, filed in early September 2018, to obtain these documents.
"We must demand clean air for our children and our country must take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said California Governor Gavin Newsom. "Yet the Trump administration is voluntarily hiding information about the misguided lowering of federal vehicle emission standards because there is simply no science or logic behind their actions."
California and 17 other states have already filed suit against the Trump administration for rejecting the Obama administration's energy efficiency rules and beginning the process of weakening them.
The attorneys general of these states accuse the Trump administration of ignoring the law on administrative procedures by not justifying their policy proposal.
EPA and NHTSA proposed last August to freeze the energy efficiency rules for cars and light trucks in the Obama era, instead of raising them every year from 2020 to 2026.
The agencies have also proposed to revoke a California Clean Air Act waiver, followed by more than a dozen other states, allowing it to set stricter standards for emissions. of vehicles than the federal rules. California and other states are expected to resume legal action in the coming months as the Trump administration finalizes its plan to relax the fuel rules and revoke the waiver.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said on Thursday that he hoped California would not sue the agency once the law was rescinded, but predicted "we'll go to court".
"I think we have a strong legal basis and that our courts will meet our standards," Wheeler said at the Washington Auto Show.
The Trump administration claims that Obama's stricter rules, aimed at fighting transport carbon emissions, would make new cars unaffordable, forcing drivers to use older, less safe and less environmentally friendly vehicles.
A freeze on fuel standards could prevent 1,000 fatalities each year and save Americans about $ 2,340 on average for each new vehicle purchased, according to the Trump administration.
However, according to internal documents released in August, EPA career experts disagreed with NHTSA on the number of deaths that would be avoided by canceling the rules on energy efficiency.
Scientists at EPA's Transportation and Air Quality Bureau privately warned that the computer modeling used by NHTSA was flawed and argued that decommissioning would increase the number of deaths each year on the roads, with an average of about 17 deaths a year.
The EPA's internal analysis revealed that freezing Obama's rules would cost thousands of jobs and reduce benefits by $ 83 billion through induced reductions in pollution and carbon emissions.
According to legal experts, challenging EPA's NHTSA methodology will reinforce the argument of opponents that the Trump administration has failed to justify its plan to weaken fuel standards with scientific data.
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