The dispute centred on an exception granted to California on national vehicle emission standards, allowing it to set stricter rules than federal standards.
The United States Supreme Court has sided with fuel producers that had opposed California’s standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law, agreeing that their legal challenge to the mandates should not have been dismissed.
The justices in a 7-2 ruling on Friday overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit by a Valero Energy subsidiary and fuel industry groups. The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs lacked the required legal standing to challenge a 2022 US Environmental Protection Agency decision to let California set its own regulations.
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision.
