World News

A judge stops the EPA sending California's emissions waivers to Congress

By Staff Writer  |  4 September 2026

A federal judge in Washington granted California a preliminary injunction on 2 September against the Environmental Protection Agency's reclassification of four Clean Air Act waivers as rules, a step that would have let the Senate repeal them by simple majority. The agency was told to restore the position before June.

A United States District Judge in Washington, Beryl Howell, blocked the Environmental Protection Agency on 2 September from sending four California vehicle emissions waivers to Congress for repeal. The waivers, granted under the Clean Air Act, allow California to enforce its own emission standards for cars and trucks and for lawn and garden equipment. One was approved in 2009.

In June the agency said the waivers, granted under earlier administrations, should have been sent to lawmakers under the Congressional Review Act. That Act allows Congress to repeal an agency rule by simple majority in the Senate rather than the 60 votes most legislation needs, and it applies only to rules. California sued in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that a waiver is an adjudication of a request, not a rule, and cannot be sent to the Senate under that Act. In July, while the case was pending, the agency reclassified two more waivers, for emissions from ocean going ships in port and from commercial harbour craft.

What the court said

Judge Howell found in her preliminary injunction ruling that the agency had urged the court to "engage in Orwellian doublethink" in seeking its approval while ignoring serious inconsistencies in its position.

The EPA cannot say one thing to Congress while ignoring any consequence from reclassifying these waivers as rules.

Beryl Howell, United States District Judge for the District of Columbia

"Such gamesmanship may seem like a clever policy move, but undermines honest compliance with the law," she said. She directed the agency to take all necessary steps within its control to restore the status quo that existed before June. California's Attorney General's office said the order requires the agency to withdraw or correct its reclassifications and to refrain from giving them, or any other reclassification, any effect. The agency did not immediately comment.

Why the mechanism mattered

In the more than fifty years since the Clean Air Act was enacted, the state's Attorney General said, the agency under both parties has granted California more than 75 preemption waivers and none had been treated as a rule subject to congressional disapproval, nor had any comparable agency order adjudicating a request for permission, such as an oil and gas lease or a mining permit. Lawmakers had been preparing to vote on the four waivers as soon as later this month.

The point for anyone who reads regulatory instruments for a living is the one the judge made: an instrument's legal character is fixed by what it is and does, and an agency cannot relabel it to reach a more convenient procedure. The court has, for now, held the agency to its own prior classification.

The Attorney General, Rob Bonta, said the decision rebuffed the administration's earlier efforts. "Federal emission standards should be a baseline to protect our future, not a ceiling to limit it," he said. A separate California challenge is pending to last year's congressional rescission of the state's authority to prohibit sales of petrol powered vehicles after 2035, which followed an earlier submission of waivers to Congress. The preliminary injunction holds until the case is decided.