Senate Votes to Block California Ban on Gasoline-Fueled Cars

(Bloomberg) -- The US Senate voted to block a California program banning gasoline-powered cars and other vehicles by 2035, sending the measure to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. 

The 51-44 vote Thursday rolls back an Environmental Protection Agency waiver issued under former President Joe Biden allowing California to enact emissions standards even stricter than the US government’s requirements to increase sales of electric and other zero-emission vehicles. 

The decision to repeal waivers for the state automobile programs overturns a decades-old practice — enshrined in the Clean Air Act of 1970 — of allowing the most populous US state to set stringent pollution standards that go beyond federal government requirements. That authority, first envisioned as a way to help California combat smog, has helped put Sacramento in the driver’s seat, designing pollution curbs that apply widely across the nation in other states that have opted to follow along. 

The California requirements, which drew opposition from automakers, fuel producers and Trump himself, were also set to be applied in New York, Washington and other states that agreed to follow suit. Opponents of California’s rules — which include automaker Toyota Motor Corp., the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers trade group and the US Chamber of Commerce — have said they are unachievable. 

“Over the past two decades, California has used its waiver authority to push its extreme climate policies on the rest of the country, which was never the intent of the Clean Air Act,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virgina Republican. “The decision to limit consumer choice, increase car prices, and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs was made by California, and approved by a federal administration that had already been rejected by the American voters.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta said they intend to sue the Trump administration, saying Republicans misused a 1996 law to block the state’s ability to set its own automotive standards.

“The President lacks the authority to push his anti-California agenda through the Congressional Review Act,” Bonta said during a news conference in Sacramento. “We won’t let it happen, not when we’re facing an air pollution and climate crisis that’s getting worse by the day.”

Without California’s clean air policies, pioneering companies such as Tesla Inc. would never had have gotten off the ground, Newsom said. 

“Tesla simply wouldn’t have existed as a company had not these rules been applied,” the governor said at the news conference. He added that the GOP’s move was a boon for “big oil” and China.

The measure, which was passed by the House earlier this month, comes as Trump has criticized electric vehicles, claiming they don’t work and will benefit China and Mexico while hurting American autoworkers. His administration has begun to undo Biden-era climate and environmental policies, including ones that prompt a shift to fossil-fuel free vehicles. 

The move to repeal the California requirements, which were designed to slash planet-warming pollution, more than halving greenhouse gas emissions from light-duty vehicles in the state by 2040, drew fire from groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“This vote is an unprecedented and reckless attack on states’ legal authority to address the pollution causing asthma, lung disease and heart conditions,” said Manish Bapna, the environmental group’s president. “After a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign from Big Oil, Republicans readily jettisoned their long-held view that states can best enact measures that reflect the values and interests of their residents.”

California’s policies requiring car manufacturers to gradually sell more zero-emission vehicles have been a boon to Tesla Inc. for years. Rival automakers that have been unable to meet the state’s mandate on their own have purchased compliance credits from Tesla, which only sells EVs.

While the automaker led by Elon Musk, one of Trump’s top advisers, has been shrinking in California — registrations fell all four quarters of 2024 and in the first three months of this year — it’s still by far the top-selling EV maker in the state.

The vote to repeal defied a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, a nonpartisan interpreter of the chamber’s rules and procedures, that the EPA waivers are not eligible for repeal using the Congressional Review Act. The act allows for lawmakers to rescind Biden-era measures that were finalized in the last few months of his presidency.

Republicans used a controversial procedural move to skirt the ruling, drawing vehement opposition from Senate Democrats, who said that would set a new precedent about what the Senate could do using a simple majority vote. 

“It is going nuclear,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday night, adding that it would allow Republicans to hijack the rules, erode “away at the Senate and undermine this institution they claim to care about.”

(Adds details on California’s plan to sue the Trump administration over the legislation.)

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