Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a
brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to stop the
Biden-Harris Administration from imposing an electric-vehicle mandate on
truck manufacturers. A coalition of 24 States teamed up in _Nebraska v.
EPA_ to challenge the new rule.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has declared war on American energy,
and Americans are tired of its direct impact on their bank accounts,”
said Attorney General Marshall. “If Hurricane Helene and Milton taught
us anything, it’s that we cannot rely entirely on electric vehicles.
We must have secure, affordable, and reliable access to
internal-combustion trucks which have kept our country moving for
decades.”
In April, the federal Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA)
published a rule imposing stringent tailpipe emissions standards for
heavy-duty vehicles that effectively force manufacturers to produce more
electric trucks and fewer internal-combustion trucks. The Attorneys
General argued that EPA’s electric-truck mandate raises a “major
question” that Congress has not clearly authorized EPA to decide. The
brief points out that just one tenth of one percent of all heavy-duty
trucks sold today are powered by a battery, but that the Biden-Harris
rule would increase that number to 45 percent in less than a decade.
That massive shift in the nation’s trucking and logistics industries
will slow down the transportation of essential goods, stress the
electric grid, and drastically raise prices for Americans. The brief
also argues that EPA has never before forced manufacturers to produce
electric versions of heavy-duty vehicles and that allowing the
electric-truck mandate to stand would short circuit the ongoing policy
debate that should be left to Congress and the States.
In addition to Attorney General Marshall, attorneys general from the
following States joined the brief against the Biden-Harris
Administration: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana,
Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,
Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.