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Virginia has joined 24 other states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and 12 cities and counties suing over the Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, Attorney General Jay Jones announced Wednesday.
The finding was based on scientific evidence that motorized vehicles’ carbon emissions contribute to air pollution that harms public health. Following that determination, the EPA set federal standards for emissions that led to a clamp down on the volume of permissible greenhouse gasses emitted from vehicles in newer car and truck models.
“While the Trump administration continues to try to convince us that up is down and down is up, we cannot allow them to dismiss decades of evidence gathered by the scientific community and ignore the very real harm to our health and welfare created by greenhouse gases,” Jones said in a statement.
President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded those findings and regulations last month, which the head of the federal environmental agency said would save taxpayers money and cut red tape.
“I am proud to deliver the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers. As an added bonus, the off-cycle credit for the almost universally despised start-stop feature on vehicles has been removed,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a February release.
Jones said that the EPA’s rushed rulemaking process seeks to undo decades of scientific progress and law. The agency’s arguments for repealing the rule, namely that the Clean Air Act doesn’t provide the EPA with the ability to regulate greenhouse gasses, has already been disproven by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2007 case of Massachusetts v. EPA, the state’s top lawyer said.
“Regulating human-made greenhouse gas emissions is one way we can ensure that our water quality, the cleanup progress made in protecting the Chesapeake Bay, and our futures are protected,” Jones added. “We cannot allow Donald Trump to continue to ignore scientific fact at the expense of our lives and our futures.”
The EPA’s greenhouse gas finding helped Virginia craft its emissions regulations including the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which phases out the use of fossil fuels by utility companies. The state also adopted federal Clean Cars standards in 2021, which banned the sale of new gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035.
Jones’ said that the rescission of the greenhouse gas emissions rule violates the EPA’s legal obligations to protect public health and welfare.
The case was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
