A coalition of 25 attorneys general led by Kentucky’s Russell Coleman filed a lawsuit against an economy-commandeering Biden administration electric vehicle mandate Thursday.
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new emissions demands for carmakers to reduce “fleetwide average carbon emissions” by 56 percent in eight years. The regulations would require car manufacturers to sell more electric vehicles.
Daren Bakst, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center on Energy and Environment, called the new emissions rules “one of the most extreme rules ever finalized by a federal agency.”
“The EPA’s rule would restrict the ability of Americans to buy gas-powered vehicles, a chilling abuse of power and a wanton disregard for individual freedom,” Bakst said when the regulations were unveiled.
Now, attorneys general in half of U.S. states are suing to block the administration from forcing high-cost, low-energy electric cars on American consumers.
“The Biden Administration is willing to sacrifice the American auto industry and its workers in service of its radical green agenda,” the Kentucky attorney general said in a statement. “We just aren’t buying it. Demand for EVs continues to fall, and even those who want to buy one can’t afford it amid historic inflation.”
According to an Ipsos poll with Yahoo Finance conducted last fall, 57 percent of the more than 1,000 Americans surveyed reported they were unlikely to purchase an electric car. Another 11 percent said they were unsure while just 31 percent said they were likely to buy one.
The EPA’s new emissions demands have been years in the making. In the summer of President Joe Biden’s first year in office, Biden called for new auto sales to be 50 percent electric by the end of the decade.
“There [is] a vision of the future that is now beginning to happen,” Biden said at a White House event. “A future of the automobile industry that is electric. Battery electric, plug-in, hybrid electric, fuel cell electric, it’s electric and there’s no turning back.”
EPA regulations are a cornerstone of the administration’s push to electrify the American vehicle fleet, despite China dominating the mineral supply chain required to manufacture such vehicles. In March, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal called attention to data showing “airborne tire-wear emissions are more than 400 times as great as direct exhaust particulate emissions.” Electric vehicles also remain prohibitively expensive for most consumers even after billions in government subsidies.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whose state won a landmark decision against the administrative state’s lawmaking that bypassed Congress two years ago, called the EPA’s latest emissions rules “legally flawed and unrealistic.”
“With the high prices of electric vehicles, this would have devastating effects in the daily lives of consumers—many of whom are already suffering from the burdens of historically high inflation,” Morrisey said in a statement. “This is an attack on rural America and rural Americans who are working really hard to make ends meet—they are going to get bludgeoned by this rule.”
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