Pruitt Signals Fight with CA Over Emissions Rules

Couldn't lead the White House to try to revoke the state's power to set its own limits on air pollution, joining me as Ann Carlson, environmental law professor at u c l A Law School, and Congress gave California the authority to set pollution standards that are tougher than those of the federal government in the Clean Air Act about five decades ago. What are the limits on the e p a's power to cut off that authority? Well, EPA has to give California permission through a waiver process to

issue standards that are tougher than the federal standards. It's already done that for fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas mission standards through and so the big question is can the e p A revoke that permission? And there is no explicit mechanism for the e p A to revoke a waiver. Well, there is no explicit mechanism, that's right.

I think that the EPA administrator, if he chooses to provoke the waiver, would argue that there's an implicit authority that given that they have to give permission, they also can take away that permission. I think that's going to be a hotly contected question in court, though, So that would lead to the an e p A action like that would lead to a court fight that would take years, and the industry rules would be uncertain for that time. Well, it's a very good question. It would certainly lead to

a big court fight. California has already indicated that it will sue if the federal government tries to provoke the permission that it's been granted. I think the question about whether the California standards remain in place during a court fight would be an open one, and I think a court might well allow California to move forward with its own standards while the question of the waiver is decided.

The e p A is facing an April first deadline to decide whether the Obama era greenhouse gas standards for cars and light trucks um remain in effect from I think to where does that decision stand? Do we know? We don't know yet, although we have some indication that the UH proot e p A is going to loosen the standards of the Obama administration set and I think

they're going to do it. And then the question is California has already said it's gonna implement those standards even if the federal government rolls its back, and then the big question will be will they let California do that or will they try to revoke California's waivers? Are they negotiate sations going on between California and the e p A. As I understand that there have been negotiations going on.

One thing that California would like is permission to issue standards for model years five and forward as it tries to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. But I understand that those negotiations have fallen apart. Scott Pruitt is in the press yesterday saying that it doesn't look like he's interested in and and forward years, and California is indicated it's going to move forward with its standards. New York and Washington and several other states that account for about a

third of US vehicle sales have adopted California's standards. So where does that leave them? So they can follow California standards, or they can follow federal standards. They can't put together their own standards. So as long as California standards are in place, they are free to choose to follow the California standards. Of course, if e p A tries to revoke California's permission, then that leaves all of those states

in legal limbo again. I think California will fight hard in court and will probably be joined by New York and Washington and Oregon and the other states that have chosen to follow California's lead. Is it Is it smart for these auto manufacturers in the long run to to lower the standards when they try to reseal their car resale car value, and also, you know, international standards come into play. Honestly, I don't understand the position of the

auto industry in this battle. We've seen over and over again that the auto industry tries to fight these standards and fight against technological change, environmental pressure, etcetera. We've got China for example, announcing that it's going to try to implement a zero emission vehicle goal over the course the next ten or fifteen years. Same thing is happening in Europe. Japan now has more electric vehicle chargers than it does gas stations, and so the trend is in the direction

of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero. The way to do that is to increase fuel economy and to keep tightening those standards, not to reduce it. Well, this was one of President Barack Obama's most concrete environmental achievements. Some say, and um, the Trump administration has been trying to unravel a lot of his environmental achievements. Is this part of that? In about a minute? Absolutely, this is part of that.

In fact, in my view, the auto emission standards are the most important climate change policy that the Obama administration issued, even more important than the standards for power plants. And that's because, unlike in the electricity sector, we're seeing increases in greenhouse gas missions coming from the transportation sector for

a couple of reasons. One because gas prices have been going down, and too because the auto manufacturers have been pushing hard to sell bigger vehicles SUVs and so forth, and so if this gets unraveled, we're going to see an even steeper increase in greenhouse gas missions in the transportation sector. Just briefly, and in about thirty seconds, how

much of Obama's environmental legacy is left? If you have a number, Oh, that's such a hard question, because there are a lot of places where the Trump administration is not succeeding in ruling back rolling back Obama era rules, and so we're gonna see a lot of court fights to protect what the Obama administration does. I'm sorry, did There are also some really big rules that stayed in place, including reducing toxic commissions from power plants and that sort

of thing. So it's really really hard to put a number on that, but I think you know, it is safe to say that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to roll back the major initiatives, especially on climate change. Well, thank you so much for your insights. That's and Carlson, environmental law professor at u c l

A Law School. States are going in radically different directions over whether to support President Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants to states that are diametrically opposite our Texas with its anti sanctuary law and California with its pro sanctuary law, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has now given Texas permission to enforce much, though not all, of its controversial sanctuary city ban. Joining me is Leon Fresco of

Hollandon Knight Leon. The Trump administration helped defend Texas ban in court. How big a victory is this for the

Trump administration. There's no other way to couch it other than to say that they dramatically enormous victory for the Trump administration in the sense that they now have cleared the field for states like Texas to pass these kinds of laws that basically will say, if they are able to pass them, that cities within a state cannot choose to uh say that they're not going to coop a with requests from Immigration and Customs enforcement when they ask

for information about people in their custody. You mentioned some of it there, But how what did the appeals court ruling give Texas the ability to do? Give us the

high points? Sure so, the provision that Texas pass, which was known as SB four, had four basic principles to it, and the four basic principles that it had was that it would say that if a city tried to say to its individuals that its officers could not ask about immigration information, could not cooperate with a request for immigration information from ICE, or did not work, did not comply with what are called detainer requests, which is where ICE

asked a local uh a local police office to say, hey, do you mind holding this person until we find out if there's someone we can deport, and then we'll come and pick them up. That what the Texas statute said is if a c the doesn't do all of this level of cooperation, that the actual officers who are ordering this kind of non cooperation can be fined or even can be subject to criminal penalties. And that was that had been enjoined by a lower court. But now all

of that's been viewed as fine. There's one provision that that side of that, which if you want to talk about we can that's still been enjoyed. But other than that, all of this cooperation that Texas has mandated cities to do with ICE is now required. The opinion rejected the argument that immigration policy should be left to Congress, not the States. Does that lead to the conclusion that California's

pro sanctuary legislation should be upheld. Well, it's it's it's a bit complicated because what the opinion said was that

it's Congress. If all the states and the cities have been making arguments around the court that there's this Tenth Amendment issue that Congress cannot require cooperation but it's voluntary, then if a state, in a city like California is going to say, well, you shouldn't require us to do anything, it's voluntary, then that eliminates the argument that the plainests in Texas made that this is required by statute, because the point that Texas cannot require this, because the point

is it's the cities and the state's choices to make. Then this is the state. This is the choice Texas made, and so that choice has to be respected. And so the court did kind of rub that a little bit in the face of the plaintifts to say, you can't have it both ways. You can't say a state like California can't be forced to do it, and then a state like Texas doesn't have the option to agree to

do it, to do this cooperation. And so that's why, uh, this is a particularly tough pill to swallow for the plaintiffs. The Court said, future challengers of this Texas ban will have to violate the ban and suffer the consequences to gain the legal right to sue. Considering the outrage of many when this Texas law was passed, do you expect challenges to deliberately violate the band to get into court?

I think that I think that it may be possible that people will look for extreme cases, but I think at the end of the day, based on some conversations I've had with some of the folks involved in this litigation, people are pretty uh concerned about just winding this down and not sort of allowing this impetus for for the Supreme Court to say it's fine sort of to live to fight another day and hope that other states don't do what Texas has done here and American Civil Liberties

Union lawyer vowed to keep fighting this, possibly with an eventual appeal to the Supreme Court. Are you saying that the Supreme Court might take this case or might not? Well? I think the I think the problem is I think that you know, there's there are ne jerk comments that people make right after they lose a lawsuits, but right now.

The sort of discussion is is this the right time to in a case like this to the Supreme Court, even that the Supreme Courts made a couple of other rulings already in the immigration context that have been promoting things like detention and now some aspects of the travel, then that maybe this is not the right time to bring this Texas case the Supreme Court and instead to let the sort of California cases happen and then you know, at another at another time later somebody else could challenge

the Texas case again and bring it up if you know, if if there's better inclination from the court, that something might be welcome. Here. Let's turn briefly to those California cases. The Trump administration is suing California over three laws that block local officials basically from complying with federal immigration directives. Who has the better side of that flightly on. That

is a very very interesting case. That case is for sure going to get to the Supreme Court because here there are some limits that California is putting on just basic cooperation with ice, which is, you know, if I asked for basic information on where somebody is located or what the date of the release that that cooperation is no longer allowed. And also there are provisions in there that actually limit the ability of ICE to put the

tension facilities in the state of California. The law actually says that not even one additional detention bed can be

added in the state of California. And so there there are some strong preension claims the Department of Justice has here, and I expect the Department of Justice to prevail of at least some of their claims in the ultimately, even though it may not happen in the district court, it may not happen in the Court of Appeals, but they will ultimately, I think, be able to get almost their claims prevail. The ponds that you know currently on, we'll have to We'll have to leave it at that. Well,

we'll talk about this next time. That's Leon Fresco of Hollandan Night. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Grosso. This is Bloomberg h